{"id":1258,"date":"2008-12-08T00:12:50","date_gmt":"2008-12-08T00:12:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/archives\/1258"},"modified":"2013-11-18T23:41:28","modified_gmt":"2013-11-18T23:41:28","slug":"the-strangest-gulls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/the-strangest-gulls\/","title":{"rendered":"The strangest gulls…"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

We went over to Wakehurst Place today. Beautiful sunshine again, but it was cold.
Black headed gull on frozen pond<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

The gulls were the dominant bird of the day, indeed the weekend. These black-headed gulls were skating around on the pond, and flocking for the few scraps thrown by visitors.
Flocking gulls<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Normal gull behaviour, but entertaining to watch. The strangest thing though was that as well as all the usual gull antics, they also did this:
Gulls in the treetop<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

I've never seen a gull perch like that before. A quick web search revealed that Bonaparte's gull (a similar – identical? – north American species) does the same trick. I've not come across any other references of gulls perching in trees.
More of the gulls are over here<\/a>. But there were other sights at Wakehurst, a number of which are in my December Birds<\/a> album. Including this seasonal robin.
Robin <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

And this crazed duck!

\n<\/a>
\"Nature<\/a><\/span>
Camera note: all shots taken with the EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens, except the flocking gulls which were caught with the much shorter EF 17-40mm 1:4L USM lens.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[980,989],"tags":[1160,49,78,334],"class_list":["post-1258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds-2","category-water-birds-birds-2","tag-duck","tag-gulls","tag-robin","tag-wakehurst-place","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t