Land of the Gulls

Scrutinizing the cake offering.

Monday. I didn't have any work today so I slowly made my way down to the beach. I had about 3/4 of a cake I had made for William and Sara's pot luck that didn't go over very well. First time for everything. The three layered cake was pretty heavy. It was based it on a couple of muffin recipes that sounded like a good idea at the time. As a giant muffin it would have been good. As a cake it was dry and dense.

Just so it didn't share the same fate as the bread I decided I'd bring it down to the beach and see if it could be used as bird food. If I could get in a shot or two great. I dumped the cake into a plastic bag and rode down to the beach. The beach was pretty populated by people. Doesn't anybody work these days? I wanted to find a place on the beach with as little people as possible. A) to make sure people didn't walk into the shot scaring off the birds once I had baited them with the cake, B) to make sure people lying on the beach sun tanning didn't get a swarm of birds around them (as I type this the scene from the Hitchcock movie Birds comes to mind where the girl is trapped in the phone booth).

There are those that think of these birds like rats with wings as opposed to the cute bowling ball pins with legs. Actually that's pigeons, to me anyway. I find gulls annoying, like white mini vultures that populate Toronto green space. Still they're an interesting subject to photograph.

I found a spot. It looked like a dock hidden behind some rocks. It was almost the same height as the water line. It was perfect. I threw some cake at some geese passing by but the cake dropped into the water like a rock. There were no birds around other then the geese and I scared them away with my rock cake. Fortunately, birds have keen eyesight. I wasn't long before a gull flying by figured what I was up to. Then like a siren informed other birds in the area of the cake buffet. In less than 15 seconds, after the bird cry, I had about twenty gulls hovering over my head waiting for the next crumb.


"That was my piece!"

To get the shots on this blog a placed a rather large piece of cake (about the size of two fists) in front of me. Then laid down on my stomach so I could look through the camera at ground level. I have to say I really miss my Nikon 990 (with the swivel body) for stuff like this. I could only stay in that position for fifteen minutes before my neck started to cramp up.

Eventually the cake was devoured by the gulls, a two pigeons, and a duck.

As a side note, these birds are not the same as the gulls shot the other day. I thought they were just younger versions of the same bird as the feathers may not have turned white yet. The eyes however on todays birds were black (like a sharks) where as the other bird's eyes had some color (a greenish yellow). Anyone have a bird guide?