This morning at Myers a Herring Gull had found a rubber ball, and spent at least a half hour playing with it. The gull spent most of the time poking or pushing the ball with its bill, so the ball would roll away and then the gull would run after it and catch it. The gull also carried it up in the air a few times (it was just small enough to pick up), dropped it and tried to catch it as it bounced crazily on the stones of the bar at the mouth of the creek. The best catch was a spectacular (lucky) one on the first bounce, about five feet in the air. The bird also dropped the ball once on a bunch of Ring-Billed Gulls in the water, scattering them- they did not try to take it themselves, I think it may have been too big for them to pick up (it floated), but the Herring Gull was too tough to contend with anyway. The bird's chief pleasure, though, seemed to be just poking at the ball and making it bounce and roll, clearly something fascinating that is not within the repertoire of the sticks and stones that normally serve as gull toys.
--John Greenly Ludlowville -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
