Towheeblog

This incident of gull vs. tourists took place at Limantour Beach, Pt. Reyes, a few days ago.

Today I was leading a group of birders and we stopped for dinner at an outdoor seafood cafe in Ventura. Some other diners left their table and a first-year Western Gull quickly swooped down to empty the small container of tartar sauce left on the table. That very same gull also proved adept at catching French fries with his beak. By that time he had managed to get most of the spare sauce off his beak. We offered him a napkin which he eschewed with apparent disdain. Real gulls don’t do napkins?

Why Ventura? Tomorrow we take the Island Packers boat out to Santa Cruz Island for the endemic Island Scrub-Jay, an example of evolutionary giantism, like the Komodo monitor lizards, but not as dangerous.