The Daily Bucket is a nature refuge.
We amicably discuss animals, weather, climate, soil, plants, waters and note life’s patterns.
We invite you to note what you are seeing around you in your own part of the world, and to share your observations in the comments below.
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February 9, 2020
Salish Sea, PacificNorthwest
The last of this winter’s King Tides have lifted driftwood off beaches all over the SalishSea. One particular piece has wandered for at least a couple of months and a few days ago I watched a gull rolling on it as the driftwood floated in the swells approaching the beach.
The gull was grooming intermittently but it didn’t appear too serious about it. More like Can I do these two things at once?
Or — I can balance on a rolling log with my eyes closed!
Now granted, if it were to fall off, it wouldn’t be far, and into the water where it spends a good bit of time anyway. And it can use its wings to pull out a save in a pinch. Still, a rolling gull is pretty impressive. I couldn’t do that, for long anyway.
Here’s a brief clip of the action:
Intriguingly, that piece of driftwood looks like the very same one that got washed up onto a rock a little ways down the beach back in December. It sat there for a week before another extreme high tide lifted it off. I looked for it along the beach after that but it wasn’t anywhere obvious.
But here’s the thing. One day while I was watching the driftwood on the rock rolling a bit back and forth — in enough water to float but not enough to float away — a gull approached it after polishing off a crab.
The gull very deliberately chose to hop up onto the log (after thoroughly cleaning its bill after its lunch). If the gull had wanted to perch up high, there was the little island right behind it. No, for some reason the moving log appealed to it.
Video clip of the gull on that day:
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Some things I wonder about:
- Where was the driftlog over the past two months and how did it find its way back, if the same one? and where is it now?
- Is this the same gull, on Dec 11 and Feb 9? Certainly a Glaucous-winged gull on both occasions, with moderately darker grey wingtips than pure GWGU meaning both/same have a similar amount of Western gull in them, ie a hybrid (these are so common in the Salish Sea that such hybrids have a name: Olympic gulls). Olympics come in the whole range, from mostly GWGU to mostly WEGU, so the degree of hybridization is a way to narrow down individuals.
- Why would a gull go out of its way to perch on this log? It’s very common for birds of all kinds to sit on logs out in the water but that’s because there’s nothing else nearby around to perch on. In both cases here there are rocks, docks, boats and land very nearby.
and
- What does a gull think about when rolling on a log? Is it fun? a challenge?
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Showers today in the PacificNorthwest, low to mid 40s F. Breezy out of the southeast.
What’s up in nature in your area today?
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