Reader Ed Kroc, who’s just started his postdoc, sent some photos of Gulls Growing Up:
I spent much of the summer collecting data on our resident rooftop-nesting Glaucous-winged Gulls (Larus glaucescens) here in Vancouver, with the aim of studying both fledgling success rates and estimating the overall size and distribution of the breeding population throughout the city. I naturally have a ton of pictures to go along with this work; attached are photos of one particular family with chicks from hatching to fledging. These particular parents have raised a full brood of three chicks at this location each year for at least the past five years.
The first photo shows the father gull with his three hatchlings, June 20th. The youngest is newly de-egged in front, too tired to lift up his head or wiggle his rear out of the broken egg shell. The two one-day old siblings are visible just behind.
The very next day the eldest started exploring outside the nest cup. The second photo shows him napping with dad (on Father’s Day!), the other two chicks being warmed underneath. You can see the discarded eggs shells deposited behind the adult outside of the nest.
This nest site is situated six storeys above street level in downtown Vancouver, atop the ventilation and climate control utility structure on the roof of a short office building. The space is flat, about 15 meters by 15 meters, and inaccessible to people. The surface is mostly covered in moss, grass, and other greenery now, but a few old manmade items remain, like this rusty pipe that the chicks love to hide and play in.
The third photo shows the three chicks at about a week old hanging out at the pipe.
Fast forward five weeks and the chicks are still hanging out together at the pipe, and still trying to hide in it despite their size.
Two weeks later, the chicks fledged down to the roof below. They spent another week there practicing their flight skills before heading off to the water to start learning how to find food for themselves. The last picture shows them huddled up in the evening around some derelict electrical or ventilation unit.
Really good photos/story. This would be National Geo class.
What a lovely visual journal of urban wildlife! I think we often don’t appreciate the importance and complexity of play behavior in young birds, as much as we do for juvenile mammals. Another resourceful exploitation of human-made spaces and structures too.
The gulls we have in Richmond, Va., are often the ones with the black mark/ring on their bills. And, they know where to go to find all the goodies.
Ring-billed Gulls? We have them here in Vancouver too, but they are more of migrants than residents.
I am intrigued also by the grassy rooftop. Was that planted? I suppose that would help with the economy of climate control in the building.
Looks like it is just what has grown in the accumulation of dirt & dust on the roof.
By the way, I have noticed herring gulls, Larus argentatus, still with the parents long after they can fly, begging for food with the lowered head & supplicant posture.
like teen-aged kids, though there’s a bit less lowered heads and supplicant posture there…
Herring Gulls, like the Glaucous-winged Gulls here, take about four years to reach adulthood, and the young are quite reliant on their parents for much of their first year. When they fledge at 6-8 weeks, they only then begin the process of learning how to hunt, scavenge, and generally look out for themselves. Parents will be teaching them how to fish throughout the winter months.
Dominic is right: the greenery is just the result of accumulated dirt and debris on the rooftop. However, rooftops with gull nests tend to be far greener than other rooftops because when the gulls bring materials to make and reinforce the nest, they end up depositing items that will grow. Also, I imagine the excrement from the chicks can act as a fertilizer.
Vancouver, being so wet, is a very mossy place.
Sub
Not gulls, but this news just appeared in my inbox:
http://www.galapagos.org/newsroom/new-tortoise-species-named/
Interesting – thanks.
Great commentary and photographs. Gulls are ubiquitous, but after seeing these photos, I realized I’d never seen a chick; they sure are cute. Then again, I don’t think I’ve seen a pigeon chick either.
Funny you should mention that – I had pigeons raise two chicks on my balcony this past summer! I should send along some photos of those guys. They were not quite what I would call cute though. Maybe more like so-ugly-they-are-kind-of-cute.
Cool, maybe Jerry would post them!
Up to now, I really didn’t consider gulls more than some noisy nuisances who are only slightly less in number than the local pigeons. Thank you for this new perspective.
That’s a wonderfully illustrated and nicely told story. I hope you let us know when your thesis is done and whether we might be able to see it….
Successfully raising all checks for so many years in a row is very impressive! In one of our reserves we’ve been following a Black-and-chestnut Eagle nest over the past few months. Everything was going well until the eaglet started exploring outside the nest. We found its skeleton under the nest tree this week. Don’t know what happened.
Thank you! Thankfully, my thesis is done, although I doubt it’s anything anyone would want to read (it’s all math).
But I am in the process of writing up my results from this summer’s research and hope to have the writing wrapped up in a month or two (still working on the analysis for the size and distribution of the Vancouver resident breeding population). I would be happy to send the work along to you then!
And yes, this pair of gulls is quite impressive. Their fledgling success rate is not uncommon in the city (part of what my research shows), but the fact that they repeat the feat every year for so many consecutive years seems unusual. Usually, I have noticed that parents tend to take a year or two off after a year or two of raising chicks. This pair though is tireless!
I’d enjoy reading your thesis, ESPECIALLY the math!
Thanks everyone for such nice comments! 🙂
The picture of the large chick with its head stuffed down the pipe is wonderfully comic. Gulls in urban environments tend to be somewhat unpopular with the human residents but they are really amazingly resourceful, beautiful and fascinating creatures. [And, hey, let’s face it we have messed up their environment and disturbed their lives a damn sight more than they have ours].