The Last Laugh
Back in March 1962, I watched a couple of homes float away down the Intracoastal Waterway, probably a once-in-a-lifetime event for the home owners. The laughing gulls would probably laugh with joy if that were all they had to put up with!
The new moon, coupled with a southeasterly flow, brought tidal flood levels to the Anglesea Marsh over several consecutive cycles. The marsh temporarily disappeared during each high tide, as the laughing gulls watched their homes float away. Some of the gulls, especially the immatures, also floated around, looking a bit bewildered. The adults flew around frantically, and their laughs sounded more like cries of despair.
Yes, they managed to regroup each time and build new nests that lasted about as long as your standard sandcastle at water’s edge.
The only gulls really capable of laughing were the herring gulls and great black-backed gulls. Because both are considerably larger than the laughing gulls, they maintain control of all higher areas of the marsh largely unaffected by flooding. The ospreys have an even greater advantage, looking down from their nests atop poles, perhaps enjoying a bit of sweet revenge.
You see, when an osprey ventures into an area occupied by large numbers of laughing gulls, the gulls don’t think it’s a bit funny, so they attack the intruder tenaciously. The osprey’s usual cocky shriek becomes almost a screechy whimper as it tries to evade its attackers and flee the area.
Conservationists build platforms on pilings for osprey nests. Perhaps they should consider building little platforms in the marshes for the laughing gulls, but most likely, the herring and black-backed gulls would take them over anyway.
Usually, the best solution to a problem in nature is to leave well enough alone, because none of these creatures ever ask for human assistance. Often, human intervention only exacerbates the problem in unforeseen ways. Feed a seagull and create a pest barely capable of searching for its own food. The boardwalk laughing gulls act almost like homeless people, waiting around for handouts from the tourist food kitchen. Sometimes they even blatantly steal from people who had no intention of sharing their snacks with the vagrant birds.
At the other end of the spectrum, herring gulls have adapted well to human intervention. These shore birds are capable of opening clams and crabs only by dropping them on a hard surface. At ocean’s edge, the only available area is the surf-hardened sand, but few such areas existed near the marshes until paved roads and hard rooftops entered the scene. In some areas, low tides expose surfaces hard enough, but in many areas, the mud is as spongy as the marshes themselves. The harder road surfaces also allow them to drop from a considerably lower height, and they rarely have to worry about other gulls beating them to their newly-opened dinners.
Feeding seagulls is against the law, mainly because they stop searching for natural food, but there is an upside to all of this. I’ve recently seen some fiddler crabs running around at water’s edge, clutching little signs in their claws that read, “Eat More Pizza!”