In the end, everything is a gag.

Larus dominicanus is nibbling on something. Opossum Bay, December 2010.

Larus dominicanus – A.K.A. the Kelp Gull – is a large black-backed gull with a white tail and a large yellow bill with a red spot on the lower tip. Alas, It is only the second largest (or should that be the first smallest?) gull in Australia. The wing has a wide trailing edge and a small white 'window' in the wingtip. This is how I tell ‘em apart from the bigger and friskier Pacific Gull.

In terms of tucker, the Kelp Gull takes what it can get on both land and water, but rarely in the air. It feeds mainly on fish and crustaceans, but will scavenge when it gets a chance. I understand that they have a predilection for pommes frites, Schwartenmagen and 1945-vintage Chateau Mouton-Rothschild Jeroboam.

If it cannot get that dish, it gets anxious. Indeed, Kelp Gulls have been observed feeding on living Southern Right Whales. In desperation, it will plunge its mighty beak to peck down inches into the skin and blubber, often leaving the whales with large open sores, up to half a meter in diameter! Ouch.

The BBC has more…

Comments

Carola said…

Brilliant shot.

18 January 2011 at 09:05

Kris McCracken said…

The bird did all the work.

18 January 2011 at 11:31

Anonymous said…

You're kidding with the whale thing! That's nasty!
I'm sure there's many a whale thinking "That aint what God gave you a beak for sonny!".

18 January 2011 at 15:35

Kris McCracken said…

As I said, the BBC has it all on film!

The natural world is a wonderous place...

:D

18 January 2011 at 15:41

Roddy said…

New take on sushi on the go.

18 January 2011 at 17:14

Kris McCracken said…

Very chewey I bet...

19 January 2011 at 11:49

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...

This will hurt me...

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