#black backed gull

[birds--daily]

Could you draw a black backed gull? :)

day 20

today's bird is the great black-backed gull!

- they are the largest member of the gull family

- they sometimes hunt other adult birds like grebes and puffins

- cornell calls them the "king of the atlantic waterfront" (fancy!)

- some great black-backed gulls can live up to 26 years!

[wuh2k]

I’ve taught my daughter to love pigeons. That one’s easyish…they’re fluffy and dorky in a cutesy way.

But I’ve also taught her to love gulls (seagulls aren’t real), but naturally there won’t be any videos of her feeding them out of her hands.

And if you ask her at 6yrs old, she’ll tell you that the reason we need to love them the most is because people hate them the most.

And I don’t know why.

I know the reasons people give…

They’re noisy.

They make a mess (poop & torn open garbage bags)

They steal people’s food.

And I’m like…is that it? Minor inconveniences also caused by your average drunk crowd on a Friday night? That’s it? You’re calling for culling because of slight annoyances?

We destroyed their nesting sites so they adapted and moved to the artificial cliffs of the coastal cities.

We stole all their fish, so they root through our garbage and occasionally steal someone’s chips.

And for that you want to cull them?

I love watching them on stormy days, killing it as they ride, dipping and diving, on the drafts. It makes me smile watching them wing their way home to bed at sunset, calling out to their kin and friends to join them.

Just fucking let them be. We’ve stolen enough.

[balthazarslostlibrary]

Look at this magnificent bastard

[salamispots]

saw a seagull that looked different

[kavohh707]

Take off!

Something spooked this great black-backed gull and as the world largest gull the take off was quite a sight.

[besidethepath]

Desired fish

[brooklynbridgebirds]

Happy Friday! Here's a Great Black-backed Gull in Brooklyn Bridge Park at sunrise.

[na-bird-of-the-day]

Great Black-backed Gull

Photo: John Sutton

"Our largest gull. Primarily a bird of the Atlantic Coast, seldom seen inland except around the Great Lakes. Because of its large size and omnivorous feeding habits, the Great Black-back can be a significant predator on other species of birds during the nesting season. It has benefitted from certain human activities (such as the establishment of garbage dumps) and has expanded its range southward along the Atlantic seaboard in recent decades."

- Audubon Field Guide

[antiqueanimals]

The Common Objects of the Seashore. Written by John George Wood. 1857.

Internet Archive

[plumes-merry-critters]

Calm gull on the street light in the port, probably a great black-backed gull

[blogbirdfeather]

Great Black-backed Gull - Gaivotão-real (Larus marinus)

Setúbal/Portugal (13/11/2023)

[Nikon D500; AF-S Nikkor 500mm F5,6E PF ED VR; 1/2500s; F6,3; 500 ISO]

[eros-ghoulette]

have some birds and where i got the inspiration from

shoebills are so fucking creepy and have you ever seen a barn owl chick 😭😭😭????? They look so fluffyyyyy

let me just summon you here @sovaghoul @icechippies @kentuckyfried-chilton

[triruntu]

#541, a great black backed gull!

Requests for birds are open, updates happen on Thursdays. [project tag] | [kofi] Find me on: [twitter]

[ornithological]

a pair of great black-backed gulls (larus marinus) on a date in county galway, ireland

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

the thing with the "not like one of these store-bought types" is

ok so like. have any of you ever been in a casual group conversation, like with a group of friends or classmates or something. and it's like, one guy talking with multiple girls. or one straight person talking to multiple gay people. or one cis person talking to multiple trans people. or one white person talking to multiple people of color. basically Person With X Privilege talking with a group of people who don't have that privilege.

and someone from the bigger group makes a dig at the Person With X Privilege, but like, in an accurate way? like, a woman making a joke about how the one guy in the group doesn't have to worry about walking home at night by themselves, or a gay person making a joke about how the one straight person was allowed to take their date to prom and nobody else in the group was, etc etc etc? and then the group of people laughs?

if you've ever been in that sort of situation, you know the Person With X Privilege has a choice: either laugh along with them, or get defensive. and the correct choice is to laugh along. by making the joke about X Privilege right in front of the Person With X Privilege, the group is giving the Person a chance to prove that they have a baseline level of awareness about their privilege.

not that laughing along makes Person With X Privilege like, One Of The Good Ones or anything, but it shows the group that they're self-aware enough to recognize that they have X Privilege and they're not going to try and deny it or argue about it. (and we're all familiar with those conversations, right? the "not all men" argument? like, a joke about white privilege gets countered by a white person being like "well, i'm also a woman!" or "i grew up poor!" or "my best friend is Black!" trying to distance themselves from their white privilege instead of just laughing along and agreeing with the simple fact that yes, I have white privilege, it's true)

when calico jack said "That's a real pirate! Not like one of these store-bought types," that's the social interaction he was setting up. people don't become pirates by choice, they do it because they have no other choice—everyone on stede's crew is there because they can't make a living elsewhere. stede is the only one there who was born into wealth and still has all his wealth. that's a privilege nobody else on the ship has.

and instead of laughing with them, shrugging it off, stede got defensive. only instead of arguing that he is a real pirate, he tried to argue that jack isn't. and lucius is right: it is a bitchy question! from the perspective of the crew (who weren't all around for jack and stede's first two interactions, first on the deck and then at breakfast), jack just gave stede an opportunity to laugh along with the group. and rather than be cool about it, stede got defensive and bitchy.

(not that jack was being genuine in any way. there's no way the tears are authentic. it's questionable if he's telling the truth about his crew mutinying three times in the past year. he's not actually giving stede an opportunity to laugh along with the crew, he's setting stede up to be defensive so he can make stede look bad. but that doesn't make what he said about "store-bought pirates" any less true.)

[besidethepath]

I ordered fish fillet! Where do the bones come from?