Birds of a Feather

Young Herring gull with crab

We’ve arrived at Long Beach Island for a week’s vacation with our entire family. This is a great place to be for shorebirds, gulls, and seaside wildlife in general. Our first stop was at the Lighthouse where we encountered the expected assemblage of gulls and terns. This young American Herring gull seemed anxious to show us his morning catch…. a small crab. We’ll mosey down the bayside streets to see what other birds of interest are around.

It does not take long to realize that the theme of the day is going to relate to the fact that many of the birds we find are hanging out with their relatives, hence the title for today’s post “Birds of a Feather”. The first group was an assembly of House sparrows. We estimated that there were well over 2 dozen in a single cedar tree and on the tiny “beach” below.

While a group of sparrows would scour the beach sands and seaweed for whatever tender morsels were offered, the others remained up in the cedar keeping watch. We had hoped for a more “exotic” species of sparrow, but this mass group made the finding all the more interesting for a photograph this morning.

Laughing gulls looking for a fresh water drink….

A short distance down the bay, we pulled into the area known as Viking Village. This is a center for commercial fishing vessels and the gulls know that there will be easy pickings here. Fresh water, however, is a treasured commodity and a puddle from yesterday’s rainfall provides this group of Laughing gulls with a refreshing drink.

Great Black-backed gulls

Meanwhile on the oceanside beach, there are a group of Great black-backed gulls simply relaxing in the late afternoon sun. Again, other than a few “fly-bys”, the only birds seen on the beach were these black-backs. So what is causing the groups to concentrate in same-species groups today? Only they know for sure, but it could be that these are members of the same family which have recently fledged and are now out on their own…kind of…. Young birds will often stay near their parents and each other for protection and to facilitate food gathering. Or could it be that the birds are already “staging” to get ready for the journey south. Although we think of mid to late July as still being early summer, for the birds their work of nesting and bringing new life into the world is pretty much complete and it is almost time to think about heading south again. For whatever reason, the old adage of “birds of a feather” seems to be very apropos at this time on Long Beach Island.