{"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&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->We went over to Wakehurst Place today. Beautiful sunshine again, but it was cold.<br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/fox\/blackheadedgulls\/album\/slides\/black_headed_gulls_ice_0712083368.html\" target=\"_blank\"><img SRC=\"http:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/fox\/blackheadedgulls\/album\/black_headed_gulls_ice_0712083368.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" \/><span class=\"aligncenter\">Black headed gull on frozen pond<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p>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.<br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/fox\/blackheadedgulls\/album\/slides\/black_headed_gulls_flock_0712083466.html\" target=\"_blank\"><img SRC=\"http:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/fox\/blackheadedgulls\/album\/black_headed_gulls_flock_0712083466.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" \/><span class=\"aligncenter\">Flocking gulls<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p>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:<br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/fox\/blackheadedgulls\/album\/slides\/black_headed_gulls__tree_0712083581.html\" target=\"_blank\"><img SRC=\"http:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/fox\/blackheadedgulls\/album\/black_headed_gulls__tree_0712083581.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" \/><span class=\"aligncenter\">Gulls in the treetop<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I&#39;ve never seen a gull perch like that before. A quick web search revealed that Bonaparte&#39;s gull (a similar &#8211; identical? &#8211; north American species) does the same trick. I&#39;ve not come across any other references of gulls perching in trees.<br \/>More of the gulls are over <a href=\"http:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/fox\/blackheadedgulls\/album\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>. But there were other sights at Wakehurst, a number of which are in my <a href=\"http:\/\/my.opera.com\/Words\/albums\/show.dml?id=649332\" target=\"_blank\">December Birds<\/a> album. Including this seasonal robin.<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/12\/robin_0712083566.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img SRC=\"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/12\/robin_0712083566.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" \/><span class=\"aligncenter\">Robin <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p>And this crazed duck!<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/12\/duck_blur_0712083345.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img SRC=\"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/12\/duck_blur_0712083345.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" \/><br \/>\n<\/a><br \/><span class=\"aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/natureblognetwork.com\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/natureblognetwork.com\/button.php?u=Words\" width=\"0\" height=\"0\" alt=\"Nature Blog Network\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/span><br \/><i>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":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1258\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}