Chance of Kingfishers: Ruffians and Pirates--on taking sides

So it seems that I am not on my way to becoming a National Geographic photographer. It is not a viable fallback career. I blame my fabulous new digital camera, which I can't operate very well. Yet, let's say. So nearly all the bird pictures I will be posting in the next few days were taken by my father, who does not need a fallback career.

I want to discuss gulls. I think of sea gulls as the ruffians of the ocean world. Scavengers, fishermen, and predators of the wee darling that are puffins. Puffins are Small. Way smaller than I thought they were. They are only threatening to little eel fish, whom they stack up in their bills with sawteeth edges so nobody can fall out. Sea gulls are Way Scary to puffins. There's this hierarchy of predators in the seabird world just like in every other environment. Puffins are largely prey. Sea gulls are ruffians. Skuas are the pirates. As the Collins guide says, they obtain most of their food through piracy. This raises some interesting visuals, unless you're wondering what the heck a skua is. Think big gull-like bird with eagle-beak. Piracy in the seabird world means you come winging up hard and mean on a less aggressive bird, like a gannet, which gets so afraid it throws up all the food it was storing in its gullet in order to get away. The gullet is like the purse you might throw at a nasty mugger in a dark alley, only it's full of delicious fishy things.

True birders don't take sides in these matters. Everybody eats somebody and we humans are the worst culprits of all. I am not a true birder--I'd take a clumsy engaging wee puffin over a gull or a skua anyday. Maybe when Isaiah's prophecy comes to pass, we'll all be eating grass. Who knows? For now, we're skuas. Or gulls. I feel more akin to a gull than a skua--more of an opportunist than a dedicated predator. So I'm posting some mug shots. This herring gull was willing to put up with a photo shoot in the hopes of scraps. Villain.