It’s Pie Day today: the annual pie-baking drive for the local elementary school, so look for a stuffed Professor Ceiling Cat this afternoon and some nice pie photos tomorrow. In the meantime, we got your wildlife.
First, two meese from Stephen Barnard:
A couple of moose (Alces alces) helping themselves to my alfalfa, and three youngsters taking a break.
And reader Ed Kroc documented some animal behavior:
I wanted to send along a series of photos of two adult male Glaucous-winged Gulls (Larus glaucescens) wrestling each other on a balcony ledge some twenty storeys above downtown Vancouver. I have seen gulls do this to both establish or defend a territory, as well as to vie for a potential mate. I do not know if females engage in similar behaviours. I haven’t witnessed it personally, although I don’t think that should be taken as evidence against the proposition: I freely admit that I am drawing from an extremely small and nonrandom sample of local gulls (and I also couldn’t really tell the sexes apart at a glance until about a year ago).
Anyway, what is odd to me is that I’ve usually observed this behaviour in the late winter and spring months, when the gulls return to their nesting sites or look to establish new ones. These two were going at it in September though (notice the dirty streaking on their necks and heads – that’s the winter hood coming in). The gull on the right in these pictures engaged the one on the left. They wrangled each other for about a minute, with the attacker seeming to have the upper hand (he has the other’s beak firmly clamped in his own for most of the struggle). I captured the last few seconds on video, after the wings had stopped flapping and the defendant looked to be considering submission. A third male interjected himself though and scattered the pair before they could finish the skirmish.
And as lagniappe, I’ve included a photo of one of several stuffed animals I was devoted to as a child. This is William Everett Alligator, or just William Everett, and he was acquired when I was about five years old when on a family vacation to Florida. He’s not in bad shape, although his nose has seen better days. He keeps watch over my apartment from one of the living room bookshelves. Looking at him now, I actually think his plush morphology is more suggestive of a crocodile than an alligator, but he is what he is.
(By the way, did you know that Canadians call stuffed animals “stuffies”? I just learned this a couple months ago, and I’ve already incorporated it into my lexicon. It’s such a better term than the rather clunky sounding “stuffed animal.”)
Stuffies!?! Stuff and nonsense! I’ve been a Canadian since 1953 and I’ve never heard plushies called stuffies. Never! Not even in Vancouver!
Some ‘merkins will believe any silly thing.
I never heard it when I was a kid but that seems to be the lingo the kids are using these days. I’m in Ottawa.
I’m in NZ and I haven’t heard of stuffies or plushies. We mostly call them “cuddly toys”.
Great pics btw, but they always are.
Lol, maybe I shouldn’t have made such a broad generalization. I’ve encountered several people from the Prairies who use the term “stuffy” here, as well as a few native Vancouverites. I can’t claim to have taken an authoritative poll or anything though. Regardless, I quite like the term myself. Sounds very friendly and spunky!
Stuffie is a Rhode Island dish, stuffed clams!
http://therhodeislandstuffie.blogspot.fr/
Yum!
I thought March 14 (3-14) was Pie Day.
That’s Pi day, or alternatively 22 July using day/month format.
Better to have one day for Pi or pie methinks.
Relax everyone – I just Googled the “Latex” book next to William Everett Alligator and it’s not what you think.
and sub, as well.
😀
Indeed…and, to bring it back on topic, if you discover a bug in your LaTeX, you can get a check for a pi….
b&
I did try putting some pie in my latex once but I found that, if anything, it attracted even more bugs 🙁
I should have included a reference for the uninitiated:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuth_reward_check
b&
Thanks Ben – I checked it out and it was very rewarding.
Consider me finally initiated. I just dug out my 1975 Knuth and, sure enough, at the very end of his Preface to the Second Edition he offers the $2.00 reward. Mea culpa for not having read all the fine print lo those many years ago.
Just think…if you had read the fine print, you might have gone searching for an error and had your very own Knuth check….
b&
Yeah, right. I might have found a typo, but doubt anything else. I met Knuth at my ex’s PhD orals (Chem with CS minor). Just emailed my ex to see if he remembered about the checks, and he said he vaguely recalled something Knuth mentioned in class. I used the text in an intro course, but never was taught by the great man himself. Brilliant book. I keep telling myself I’m going to work through it…
I keep telling myself I’ll work though it, too…right about the same time I make my way through Newton’s Principia and Darwin and….
b&
Know watcha mean
It’s exactly what I thought it was.
Thanks for clearing that up🐱
Me too — I live in the same city as Ed Kroc (and have lived here since I was a child) and I never heard “stuffies” for stuffed animals. (I also read the same books he reads.) But maybe I’m an out-of-touch old fart.
I doubt it (the out-of-touch part)! I blame all mistakes of local vernacular that I’ve pick up on the fact that 3 out of every 4 people I seem to meet in Vancouver are not actually from Vancouver originally. 😉
Stuffie? Hmmm. That might be useful.
I have a collection of stuffed plants. People never understand “stuffed plants” so I have to explain “stuffed animals that are plants”. Contradictory though it is (technically), that gets understood.
That’s funny!
“three youngsters taking a break”
I guess eating stolen alfalfa is tiring work.
The only foodstuff related to “stuffie” that I’m aware of is “stuffing”, which is also known as force-meat and is what you shove inside a turkey or other roast meat to add flavour. Americans call it “dressing” but it doesn’t seem to go inside the bird so it’s quite different really.
http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/4860/classic+roast+turkey+with+festive+stuffing
Hmmm, I have to say that William Everett looks quite good in that photo. Maybe he’s more photogenic than I thought!
By the way, seeing those books in this context compels me to make a recommendation to whoever is interested: read Robert Kaplan’s “The Nothing that Is: A Natural History of Zero” (it’s the very top book in the photo). Still one of the best written and most engaging mathematical histories I’ve ever read, with absolutely no specialist knowledge required.
Moose are such pleasingly ungainly looking creatures. 🙂
Ed, that’s a fascinating gull series. Do you have an office nearby that’s about that height?
It’s come up before, on a bird forum I’m on, that sometimes in the fall you can observe birds engaged in spring-like behaviors. Examples have included grebes appearing to be building nests, and hawks engaging talons & tumbling together while in flight. I don’t know if these are another example of animals reacting to specific fall day-lengths with behavior typical of the same day-lengths in the spring, or not.
It’s my apartment, actually. I’m on the 21st floor so I have a good view of many surrounding rooftops. There’s also the one building right next door that’s about the same height where these gulls were caught scuffling.
I hadn’t considered the spring behaviour in the fall explanation for their behaviour. That may be a good explanation. I wonder if there is any correlation between individuals engaged in this “shadow” behaviour and the age of the individual. That is, I wonder if younger birds are more likely to behave this way, kind of as an unconscious primer for the “real thing” in the spring. Just a thought.
That sounds like a wonderful vantage point for certain observations! (Does Vancouver have any urban peregrines?)
And your point about age is a good one, one I’ve heard before and one that no doubt makes more sense than the day-length phenomenon for longer-living, slower maturing spp with more complex behavior, such as gulls.
(We’ve recently had our usual bunch of “fall peepers” and chorus frogs valiantly vocalizing as if it were spring–well, not nearly so robustly, but vocalizing anyway–and I think that phenomenon in resident amphibians is rather well-tied to day-length.)
As you no-doubt know, fall is also prime bird vagrant season, and the majority of these really off-course birds do tend to be immatures. (That’s actually not terribly pertinent, here, except to the point that immature/newly adult birds do have some wrinkles to iron out, as it were.) If I’m reading one of my gull books right, Glaucous-wingeds achieve adult plumage after their 4th prebasic molt, which is listed as occurring in November. Your birds are obviously still in the middle of a molt–perhaps these are just becoming adults and experimenting with adult-like behaviors. (I believe that was the speculation about the hawk interactions I mentioned previously.)
I’m sure there are many better ornithologists here–probably you yourself!–who have significantly more, literature-based information about this phenomenon. 😀 As you can see, I like to learn (& speculate) about behaviors, and your text set off that urge, for better or worse.
I am just an amateur, but I too like to learn and speculate whenever I can. I wish I could tell the age of this species after they acquire their adult plumage. It seems very logical that these are young adults here (4-5 years olds), and that they would engage in this type of spring shadowing behaviour more than an experienced adult, but it seems like the only way to confirm that would be to tag and track. Unfortunately, I don’t have the skills, training, or resources (or permits!) to pursue these questions in a more structured setting. :/
I have never seen any falcons inside downtown Vancouver. Occasionally, one will wander into Stanley Park (which immediately abuts downtown to the northwest), but birds of prey don’t seem very comfortable in the city here. I think it’s because of the very large and stable populations of gulls and crows; they pretty much own the urban skies. (To clarify, those are resident Glaucous-winged Gulls only – any other species that comes and goes sticks to the parks and coasts.)
Bald eagles often wander into downtown (several pairs maintain nests in Stanley Park), but they are immediately driven out by the gulls and/or crows. I am constantly amazed at their ability to thrive in the urban environment. I would love to study adaptation and the dynamics of urban bird life more formally. Maybe someday!
Man, I love Vancouver! Haven’t been there for ages…once considered going to UBC just because of the setting. 🙂 Stanley Park is incredible.
Coincidentally, I just got this link from Cornell a few days ago:
http://www.birds.cornell.edu/citsci/research-recap/2014/10/a-murder-in-the-city/?utm_source=Cornell+Lab+eNews&utm_campaign=6508cfa3ff-Cornell_Lab_eNews_2014_11_06&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_47588b5758-6508cfa3ff-278154717
Doesn’t seem too earth-shaking…but I know there have been lots of crow/human-environment studies. I had no idea Glaucous-wingeds were so urban. I’ve only seen them in Oregon. In Albany, as a matter of fact, but that doesn’t seem too urban to me, esp. next to Vancouver! 😀
FWIW, there are urban Red-tails in some cities (L.A., for one, I believe); there are vids on YouTube of them eating not only pigeons but gulls as well.
Ahem…speaking of which, you probably saw this cool WEIT thread!
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2014/01/01/readers-wildlife-photos-a-red-tailed-hawk-hunts-pigeons-in-providence/#comment-671172
UBC has a really cool museum too. I would live to live out there. BC is, after all, away from the polar vortex & I could drive my roadster all year!
As if it didn’t already have enough going for it! (UBC, not your roadster–but I’m sure it does, too. 😀 )
there is all the rain, though…Not to put a damper (ha) on things. BC is all-around gorgeous!
Not on all parts of BC. I have friends in Kelowna and Victoria and they don’t have a ton of rain.
But Vancouver itself has lots of rain.
Yeah but I wouldn’t want to live in Vancouver. Too busy a city that is hard to drive in & with limited public transit.
At least it has a train to the airport.
I grew up in western Oregon. I know rain. 😀
Interesting article! I find it particularly interesting that the observed breeding success rate was so high in the wilderness. It would be great to compare that rate to other wilderness areas.
Just like with crows, I’m pretty certain that there are distinct urban and non-urban populations of Glaucous-winged Gulls, at least around BC. I also imagine that the urban residents do not migrate at all. I’ve seen a bit of work done like this (with gulls in the Georgia Strait), and most GW gulls there seem to stay in the area year-round.
More than that though, the gulls react very differently to humans in and outside of the city. GW gulls here will let humans get quite close (close enough to touch them sometimes, although they do *not* like that!), whereas GW gulls outside of the city remain suspicious of humans and generally won’t allow people to approach within a metre. The resident urban population here seems to have a very different dynamic with humans in general. I imagine the fact that they raise their young in the city plays a big role in this.