#larus

[shandzii]

Larus's dad jumpscare

[vinnybox]

My humble bday offering for @oriiduckko & @shandzii 🙏(◕u◕)

[ilovekholarus]

wait da minute... PAUSE-

[jadafitch]

Franklin Island Light, Muscongus Bay, Friendship, Maine. Once the lighthouse was automated in 1933, all the structures, save the tower and oil house, were burned. In 1973 U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service took over care of what is now Franklin Island National Wildlife Refuge. It's a popular nesting spot for a number of gull species, as well as eiders, storm petrels and other sea birds. Because of this, the refuge is closed to the public annually from April 1st to July 31st, so the birds can focus on keeping their chicks safe and fed.

[crocuta1]

Callie's favorite water boy

Also, quick update for those un aware, I'm gonna have to shave Poptart bald :/ (plus rework his whole entire structure or sum idk teehee) enjoy these other doodles as compensation.

[haveyouseenthisbirdpoll]

Photo source

Map source

[ornithological]

great shearwaters (ardenna gravis), sooty shearwaters (ardenna grisea), european herring gulls (larus argentatus) and great black-backed gulls (larus marinus) scavenging from a trawler, ireland

[luciiferous]

[oc] the arrival

(or: images taken seconds before disaster)

[keeskiwi]

Drawings of Larus... my baby girl who is the most politest of seagulls.

[ethanm8n]

Juveniles

August 22, 2024

Juvenile California Gull

Now that most of the local Olympic Gulls are out of their nests, scattered along beaches, docks and alleyways, I think it would be a good time to talk about juvenile plumages. I would also like to briefly explore the types of moult that young birds undergo in early life, particularly in their first year.

Juvenile Plumage

Nestlings in most species begin replacing their natal down in the nest in a process called prejuvenile moult, which results in juvenile plumage.* Juvenile plumages (and subsequent immature plumages, like those of larger land birds and gulls) are fascinating, fine-tuned to give a young bird the best chance of survival. Thrushes like American Robins are speckled with dots and teardrop patterns to confuse a chasing predator, while the muted grey and brown colourations of Larus gulls act as camouflage. In fact, as for adult birds, juvenile plumages serve multiple and often conflicting functions (e.g. predator confusion vs camouflage), which find balance through natural and sexual selection.1

Fledgling Swainson's Thrush. Notice the buff teardrops on the upperparts and speckled chest.

Formative Plumage

There is also a wide variety of moult strategies for immature birds. In most cases, juvenile feathers have to grow quickly, being semi-functional by the time the bird has left the nest. Because of this, these feathers are of lower quality than adult feathers. Combined that with the fact that most species have a longer delay between prejuvenile (first prebasic) and second prebasic moult than subsequent moults, many species have supplemental moults to maintain feather quality.2 The preformative moult takes place after, or even before, the prejuvenile moult has completed, producing formative plumage. In many songbirds, and small gulls like Bonaparte's and Franklin's Gull, this moult is limited to body feathers and some coverts, though there is much variation.

First cycle Franklin's Gull. This individual has some grey feathers appearing on its upperparts, marking the start of the preformative moult.

Alternate Plumage

Larger gulls (Glaucous-winged Gull, Herring Gull, Ring-billed Gull, etc.) do not have a preformative moult.** Whereas the prebasic moult is usually complete (replacing body and flight feathers) and coincides with the nonbreeding season, the prealternate moult replaces less feathers. Alternate plumage--think of it as alternating with basic plumage annually--is completed around the breeding season for many species, and is often when you see birds at their most colourful. Birds that take multiple years to reach adulthood still undergo this prealternate "prebreeding" moult--it just looks a little messy. When my local Olympic Gull Juveniles start developing grey feathers on their backs, that is the prealternate moult in progress.

First cycle Ring-billed Gull beginning its prealternate moult (light grey on upperparts).

I know I am throwing a lot of jargon around--moults, cycles and bears, oh my! If anything, this is just me, a novice birder, trying to express my excitement about such misunderstood and under appreciated subjects as the plumages of juvenile and immature birds and the process of moult in general.

Until next time.

*I might confuse a few people writing about H-P terminology and the WRP system in Canadian English. Hopefully more Old World articles begin to be written using these standards, trading in Life Cycle terminology, which has an initially shallow learning curve, with that which better accounts for eclipse plumages in ducks and variation in moult duration in neotropical birds.3

**Preformative moults actually occur in most birds, according to Pyle. However, it is not appreciable enough in the larus gulls I come across. I need to look into this further.

References

Jenni, Lukas, and Raffael Winkler. “The Biology of Moult in Birds.” Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020, pp. 10.

Pyle, Peter. “Identification Guide to North American Birds.” Part 1, Second Edition, Slate Creek Press, California, 2022, pp 16.

Wolfe, Jared D, et al. “Ecological and evolutionary significance of molt in lowland Neotropical landbirds.” Ornithology, Volume 138, Issue 1, 2021. doi.org/10.1093/ornithology/ukaa073

[octtinkk]

Fanart/celebration(?) of @ilovekholarus

Khora belongs to @oriiduckko and Larus belongs to @shandzii

I love these two so much omg😭😭😭

[shandzii]

my friends and I be goofing around wth an actor au. have some uhh Normal Guys

[drhoz]

The Great ACT-NSW-NZ Trip, 2023-2024 -Te Upoko-o-te-Ika-a-Māui

The Head of Māui's Fish - specifically, the area around New Zealand's capital city, Wellington, deriving from the legend of the fishing up of the island by the demi-god Māui. The harbour is the mouth - an area of reddish-purple rock facing onto Cook Strait was the bait Māui used.

Wellington's placement makes it one of the windiest cities in the world, and the narrow strait and howling gales makes for complicated tides and a shocking number of shipwrecks. The geology makes for some fun times too - the Haowhenua (Māori for 'land swallower') earthquake around 1460 AD raised the harbour area by 6 meters, turning some islands into the Miramar Peninsula. The 1855 Wairarapa earthquake moved a 150km stretch of the Wairarapa fault 20m along and 8m up. in some respects this was convinient timing, since the city had been desperately short of flat land at the time, and now part of the harbour wasn't harbour anymore. It's now the central business district of the city.

Every public building in New Zealand we went into had a warning plaque that the building was earthquake prone - one of the museums in wellington had that, BUT also suggested, if the quake was a particularly big one, you might want to head to the top floor rather than out into the street. Because Wellington is also tsunami prone. The 1855 quake produced one that reached 11m above sealevel.

The hills are also festooned with delightfully eccentric architecture, and more than a few funicular lifts so people can actually get to their homes from street level. One person had a funicular installed because their dog was getting elderly and struggled with the stairs.

Most of the species I saw were along the shoreline - at the harbour and ferry terminal in the city, out around the edges of the Miramar Peninsula, and out on Cook Strait at Pariwhero/Red Rocks.

The geology at Pariwhero is quite interesting - much of the basement rock in New Zealand is greywacke, a dark sandstone derived from turbidite deposits acculmulated at the edge of the Australian tectonic plate. At Pariwhero there are also deposits of argillite, a finer-grained rock quite useful for stone tools. And basalt - but the volcanic rocks are 50 million years older than the greywacke and argillite surrounding them. That's because the basalt was originally a set of seamounts - underwater volcanoes - scraped off the Pacific Plate as it subducts under what would one day be New Zealand, buried 10-15km deep, and pushed back to the surface again as more and more stuff gets piled up on the accretionary wedge and the entire area gets folded over double and concertinaed. Most of the colour in the local rocks is the result of iron leaching out of the basalt over tens of millions of years, and the argillite was deposited in the lee of the seamounts.

[ilovekholarus]

Khora's birthday doodles 🎉

[crocuta1]

Splatmeshi Captain 3, Agent 4, and Agent 8!!

Bonus poptart and larus comic:

[tangeringe]

Fanart I drew of Larus dying in a glue trap

Idk if I wanna ping them for a shitpost but larus belongs t0 shandzii, melodyofthevoid, and the-trashiest-pada