Brighton Beach 2 (taken 12/24/06)

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Brighton Beach late afternoon. The birds you see are seagulls.

A word about seagulls ... They are in general medium to large birds, typically gray or white, often with black markings on the head or wings. They have stout, longish bills and webbed feet.

Most gulls are ground nesting carnivores (meat eaters), which will take live food or scavenge opportunistically. The live food often includes crabs and small fish. They are typically coastal or inland species, rarely venturing far out to sea. The large species take up to four years to attain full adult plumage, but two years is typical for small gulls.

Gulls are resourceful and highly-intelligent birds, demonstrating complex methods of communication and a highly-developed social structure, and even in some species, tool use behavior. Many species of gulls have learned to co-exist successfully with man and have thrived in human habitats. Others rely on kleptoparasitism to get their food.

A word about kleptoparasitism (or cleptoparasitism) ... literally, it means parasitism by theft, and is a form of feeding where one animal takes prey from another that has caught, killed, or otherwise prepared it, including stored food provisions. Kleptoparasitism is also "stealing" nest material or other inanimate objects from one animal by another.

When feeding these seagulls (technically against the law here in Brighton Beach, but a law often ignored), one sees a bird with a bit of food hanging from its beak try to fly away from the flock but followed by other gulls who are trying to take that food away from that first bird. Seems the "haves" have to feed the "have-nots" even with birds.

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