The week before Thanksgiving, after a couple of days in Waynesville, North Carolina with my mother, Carrie and I drove down to Savannah, Georgia to spend some time with my brother Jerry and his wife Kim. On Monday, we spent the day in the City of Squares. We took two walking tours viewing the squares and the historical houses of Savannah, GA. Carrie and I had a great time. Savannah is a beautiful city and has a wonderful history. My favorite walking tour there is the Civil War tour, but as this is a birding blog I will focus on the birds I saw in Savannah.
During our tours, I saw two Northern Mockingbirds. When I saw the first Mockingbird, I mistook it for a Shrike. This was something of an omen or portent of things to come during our vacation. At the end of our tours, Carrie and I walked to the dock, where I was able to see three species I had never seen before: Brown Pelicans, Laughing Gulls, and an immature Herring Gull. Ring-billed Gulls and Double-crested Cormorants were also present. Of course, I was most excited to see the Brown Pelicans. For those who don't know this about Brown Pelicans, their head, neck, and wings are brown only in their first year. The adult Brown Pelicans have mostly white heads and necks, and partially white wings and backs. The Juveniles have white bellies, while the adults have brown bellies. The Pelicans I photographed were dressed in their nonbreeding plumage. Had I come a month later, they would have been much different in appearance. I first noticed the Pelicans occasionally flying along the river, but I later noticed them landing in the water, usually in groups of two or three. Some of them landed quite close to the dock.
Although, I found the Brown Pelicans most interesting, I also enjoyed watching the Double-crested Cormorants. However, they did not fly very close to the dock, and they were very difficult to photograph on the water because about the time you zoomed in and focused the shot, they dived below and came up again a great distance from their last location. By the time you relocated them and zoomed in for your next shot, they were under the water again.
Of course, the first birds I noticed on the river and the dock were the gulls. The Ring-billed gulls can be easily identified by the black ring around their bills at or near the tip of the bills. The smaller Laughing Gulls have a black smudge behind their eye which arcs over their head. The adult birds of both species are mostly gray and white, while the younger birds have considerable brown mixed in their plumage. A few people were feeding these gulls nearby, and this created an interesting spectacle. I was reminded of a scene from the movie Finding Nemo as these gulls fought over the slices of stale bread. "Mine! Mine! Mine!" It always started with one gull carrying a slice of bread into the water. Then the other gulls would follow, and the bread would end up changing hands, or I should say, "bills," many times before it disappeared.
Notice the much larger first year Herring Gull on the left of this shot. The smaller brown gull on the right is most likely a juvenile Laughing Gull.
Eventually, after the gulls battled it out for a while, the big boys got curious as to what they had and flew over to get a closer look. The little gulls scattered away when the Brown Pelicans arrived.
The Pelicans seemed unsure of what to do with bread. When they saw the gulls fighting, they must have been expecting to find a fish. Eventually, a brave gull would mount enough courage to steal the bread back from the Pelicans. Though the Pelicans left the bread floating on the water untouched, they seemed strangely reluctant to relinquish their prize to the gulls when they returned.
Written and published on December 28, 2010
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