Send ’em in folks; we seem to be facing a chronic shortage of photos. I believe I have two batches left after this. Today’s photos come from Uwe Mueller, whose IDs and notes are indented. Click on his photos to enlarge them.
These were, as Uwe notes, “Taken near my place in the Bergisches Land, Germany.”
This adorable small bird is a Eurasian coot (Fulica atra). They look really sweet with their black outfit and their distinct white headplate and white bill.
But don’t let their appearance fool you. These are fierce little birds and very territorial. Another fellow coot gets in their way? They react immediately and forcefully:
They also don’t shy away from attacking bigger birds. This European herring gull (Larus argentatus) circled for quite some time over our local pond, waiting to see if it could grab a careless chick that got too far away from its mother. The coot yelled a warning…:
… and then went for it. The little chicken on the left side is not a coot (anyone got an idea what it is?), however it could call itself lucky to have been close to the adult coot:
Seagulls are known for their tenacity when it comes to chasing potential food. But this one finally had to fly away empty-handed. Every time it came down several coots went after it:
Another bird whose presence is not appreciated by other birds is the Common buzzard (Buteo buteo). We see them quite regularly circling through the sky. But as soon as he lands on a tree, the Eurasian magpies (Pica pica) will gather around him and watch him from close distance (which could mean even less than 3 feet). The magpies know exactly that the buzzard is too slow to catch them, so they come really close to him:
Their preferred game to annoy him is to fly from one branch to the other directly in front of his nose. He knows he can’t do anything about it because they are too quick for him:
So at one point he just gives in and leaves:
Magpies are pestering the buzzard with their little fun games, but they don’t attack him (at least not that I am aware of). Crows do, however. Here’s one Carrion crow (Corvus corone) divebombing a buzzard:
Thank you Uwe. Excellent photos and very interesting and informative commentary! For coots, brute force and tenacity wins; for magpies, agility and performance wins the day. Nice stories.
Great action shots! Fave is the coot angling itself slightly – reminds me of hockey!
I think “argentatus” refers to the silver coloration … Argerich … the pianist… Ag the symbol for the element silver… from perhaps Latin…
In German it is called Silbermöwe, translated Silver gull. So you are probably right.
Interesting!
I love to see the drama in the series of photos. Without a series like this, I wouldn’t have a clue about the soap opera going on. Thanks for documenting and sharing!
+1
+2 🙂
The “little chicken” might well be a coot chick, which have white breasts.
I liked the buzzards in Wales for their mewing call, although each spring I would feel differently when they started to attack the lambs along with the crows and magpies. They would have the eyes out of a lamb before it was fully delivered.
um, yikes!
Before I enlarged the first photo in the series (of the Eurasian coot), I thought it had a rather unusual and very fancy green feather flowing from its head…
Nice set. Thanks.
Another small episode from the “bird vs. bird” saga: Yesterday I heard several Rose-ringed parakeets (Psittacula manillensis) screaming loudly and coming closer. When they came into sight I saw that it was a flock of 15 to 20 birds. And they were chasing a Carrion crow (Corvus corone), something which I have never seen before! Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera ready. And the crow didn’t try any fancy flying manoevres but went in a straight line so the wild hunt was as quickly out of sight as they were in sight. Neither do I know how it ended.
I have no idea why they attacked the crow. My guess is the crow tried to snatch a young parakeet or steal eggs. The parakeets are a neobiota species here in Germany but I rarely see them interacting aggressively with other birds. So I’m sure there was a good reason for this behaviour.