Happenings at Bay Area Park: Seagull Frenzy

Being plagued by various illnesses and learning to navigate the maze of higher education has left me woefully behind on a lot of things, and blog posts are no exception! Now that months have passed by, I can review my notes and try to get back in the swing of things!
 
These are some Happenings at Bay Area Park (part 2 in a series!), from November 9th 2015!

The domestic swan goose still lurks on the premises. You can see him here, proudly surveying his terrain, while his four mallard friends have a little conference in the shadows.

These mallards frequently cluster together and quack to one another in soft voices. This happens suddenly and seemingly randomly. It's the same group of mallards that were present here two weeks ago. One is "wild" colored (with a greenish head), one is brown, and two are white -  and one of those has a poofy hat! These four stay together in a flock, and the mallards and the goose seem to hang out together quite a lot, with the goose following the mallards around, or the mallards following the goose. It's interesting to think that, without any other members of his own species around, this goose has perhaps found an adopted flock to be a part of.

Ah, yes: the reason we're here. (Pictured: Muscovy ducks, Franklin's Gulls, Great-tailed Grackles, Strange Human)

We're mostly visiting this park because it's a lovely place to eat lunch, and my little brother is very keen on interacting with birds. Of course one of the chief ways to get birds to interact with you is to start feeding them scraps of your lunch.

These are Franklin's Gulls (and one Great-tailed Grackle there in the back), in their winter plumage. This is not a typical year-round resident species for Texas, but a migratory one, passing through in the Spring and the Fall. Fifteen of them joined us for our lunch this afternoon.

These gulls were all pretty amicable...with one exception. You can spot the gull I'm talking about right here near the center, mouth open wide. This particular gull was ferocious. Rushing aggressively for the food, attacking any other gull that got in the way (even grabbing one by the neck for a few moments), and screaming more and more loudly and for longer periods of time as the feeding frenzy went on. The rest of the gulls were silent aside from some soft squealing calls, and didn't seem at all aggressive, not fighting with each other the way this gull was picking fights. In the video I'll be posting soon, you can see perfect examples of the fighting and screaming, and how the other gulls are just so much calmer. In addition to these behavioral differences, I couldn't see any white spots on this particular gull's wing tips, which lead me to believe that it might be a lone Laughing Gull in this flock of Franklin's Gulls. This theory is supported even further by reading the passages for these two species in The Behavior of Texas Birds by Kent Rylander (great book!), where the Franklin's Gull is noted to be gentle and non-aggressive, whereas "noisy, aggressive, and persistent" are all words used to describe the typical Laughing Gull. This brings our gull count to fifteen Franklin's, and one Laughing.

It seems that one lone grackle always managed to sneak his way into these pictures. They couldn't quite compete with the gulls, so they mostly stood on the sidelines, snatching food opportunistically. Or they ignored the frenzy entirely: the majority of the grackles were just foraging in the grass nearby.

I just like this one seagull backed by the sunlit fountain. Plus the duck face peeking in.

This Muscovy duck has such lovely yellow feet! These ducks were only slightly interested in the chicken scraps we had to offer, so they mostly just hung around the vicinity, nibbling at the occasional bits and pieces. I saw eight Muscovy ducks at the pond, and four in another part of the park, leaving us with a total of twelve seen.

A fantastic passerby to our feeding frenzy was this Great Egret, first spotted standing on the opposite side of the pond! It was not interested in the food we had to offer, sticking to the shoreline and ignoring us.

The following video shows one piece of the action for the day, including the egret walking by, and the one boisterous Laughing Gull in this flock of calmer Franklin's. In the background you can hear the grackles chattering.

Speaking of grackles, I counted thirty of them here at the pond, foraging in a loose flock. Most were wandering through the grass, looking around, occasionally picking at leaves or sticks. Whatever they were eating (small bugs, I assume?), I could never see it.

Great-tailed Grackles are gregarious birds with a highly varied diet. As most Houstonians know, they can make quite a living in a fast-food parking lot. Though most of them weren't all that interested in our fast food, foraging on their own instead, which gave me an impression of self-sufficiency. A grackle won't beg you for food, I guess, but a sea gull will.

Don't miss the grackle at the edge of the picture with a stick in his beak! Also note the way you can see all the way through a sea gull's nose.

These grackles are also one of my favorite examples of sexual dimorphism in birds, with males and females being vastly different sizes in addition to having different coloration. The big males with their long tails are obvious - seriously, they're show-offs! Rather than ever come to blows, they just engage in posturing contests with one another. I have witnessed these posturing showdowns personally in Ihop parking lots, and I've seen super poofy courtship dancing in Whataburger drive-throughs. I feel like I owe these grackles for making parking lots exciting.

*squawk*

An hour later, after the feeding frenzy was long over, we found the goose and the mallards taking an afternoon nap!

So asleep.

We were able to get very close to the goose without waking him up. He only opened his eye once to look at us. We didn't want to risk disturbing him too much, of course.

Another interesting visitor to the pond was this Black Vulture! It took a few sips of the water before flying away. A second vulture dropped by shortly afterwards!

As if really trying to showcase the variety of birdlife here at this little duck pond, twenty minutes after those vultures showed up, this cormorant appeared, drying their wings in the sun!

I also saw a small bird flycatching in a tree nearby, but I couldn't discern whether it was a wood peewee or a phoebe before I lost track of it for good. I also saw a Great Blue Heron on the Armand Bayou shore, a ladybug in some reeds, a Green Anole, four turtles in the bayou (two of those had red ears), and heard what sounded like chickadees.

There was one last strange thing waiting for us before we went home for the day: a red-eared slider in the parking lot!

My brother said he saw someone placing this turtle in the lot before they got in their car and drove away. These people had been kayaking. I'm not sure what the story behind this turtle is (why was he put here, if he was even put here at all?), but we were a little concerned about leaving a turtle in the street.

We picked up the little fellow and moved him closer to the bayou, so he could swim in if he wanted. A few minutes left alone, and into the bayou she had gone.

This concludes my park stories for November 9th (2015!). Check back soon for the third entry of this series, and a closer look at some of those Black Vultures!