Growling Gulls &

Bad-A** Butterflies
Great Black-backed Gull. Bad-A** in the egg. This photo copied under terms of GNU Free Documentation License.

Growling Gulls

Shown above is the Great Black-backed Gull, Larus marinus, a very large gull that
breeds on the European and North American coasts and islands of the North Atlantic.
This is the largest of the gulls, much bigger than a Herring Gull and often described as
the King of Gulls. It is up to 30 inches long with a wingspan as great as 6 feet, many
adult males weighing more than three pounds. Unlike most Larus gulls, Great
Black-backs will hunt and kill any prey smaller than themselves. They can swallow
puffins or small wild ducks whole. When protecting a nest, they are formidable
 A Great Black-backed Gull attacking an American Coot, probably going after food in the coot’s beak, though Great Black-backs
are also known to kill and eat coots. Photo copied under terms of GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2.

adversaries. Anyone approaching nesting

black-backs is messing with the business
end of the bull. Herring gulls are second in
terms of size, but defend their nests with
much the same ferocity.

In the spring of 1986 I spent a few days at

the Shoals Marine Laboratory, a Cornell
University teaching facility on Appledore
Island in the Isles of Shoals, some twelve
miles off the New Hampshire coast. At this
time of year, gulls nest here in their
thousands, often directly on the footpaths.
They even nest all over Star Island, where a
large church-affiliated hotel hosts many
guests, and the gulls defend their nests so
ferociously that they frighten guests. I know
from personal experience that a hike
around Appledore Island at nesting time can
test the mettle of man or boy.
Anyone hoping to walk about on any
island where gulls are nesting is well
advised to wear hooded foul-weather
 gear and carry a long stick.
This you wave in a circle
overhead to discourage gulls
from dive-bombing you with
feces, regurgitating half-
digested fish on you, or even
attacking and biting you.
Anyone venturing onto high
places during nesting season
risks a nasty fall. I was dumb
enough to find myself near the
edge of a high cliff when I
came under attack by two
black-backs that nipped me
painfully hard through my thick
Photo via pricklysquirrel

clothing, while beating me black and blue with their

big wings. I had all I could do to maintain my balance
and not fall from the cliff, but I did manage to strike
one of them with my stick, so they backed off and
resorted to strafing passes. And believe me, those
gulls had mastered the art of projectile-vomiting. They
scored some very smelly hits. Embarrassed (I had
been forewarned), I slipped unseen back to the lab
and cleaned myself up.
Herring gulls are intimidating enough, but to be
attacked by two or more great black-backs is a
daunting experience. As previously noted, they’re very Photo via The First Post
large birds, with wing-spans of five to six feet and
large, powerful beaks. Just the noise of their screaming cries is unnerving.
Some gull attacks in recent years have been severe. A child had his lip cut open
as a sausage roll was ripped from his mouth by a diving gull. A woman was rushed to
hospital with deep beak wounds to her head. A pet dog was pecked to death. An
80-year-old man suffered a fatal heart attack after being mobbed by gulls.

Bad-A** Butterflies

Confrontational creatures come in all sizes. One day as I stood on the porch of the
Shoals Marine Laboratory’s main community building, watching swallows bring food
to their nestlings under the porch, I noticed that each passing swallow was confronted
by a small white butterfly, which would fly up and dart about each bird, then return to
its perch atop a high bush. I asked the resident ornithologist whether this was
territorial behavior by the butterfly, and he said, "Oh yes, butterflies can be very
territorial, and quite aggressive." Aggressive? How can any creature with no teeth or
claws be aggressive?
There’s much disagreement on this point, among professionals as well as
learned lay people, but it seems well-documented that some species of butterflies are
very territorial. And this territoriality applies not only to other butterflies but also to
birds many times their size. On a Monarch web site in New Zealand, a member
reported a mourning cloak butterfly chasing away small birds, and another told of a
monarch driving off a large hawk circling overhead. A member of an American garden
site described a monarch repeatedly chasing off sparrows. Now any bird soon learns
that Monarchs taste terrible. Maybe they smell as bad as they taste. Perhaps the birds
would rather fly away than snap at the pest. (I doubt the hawk knows this; its “retreat”
may have been pure happenstance.)
Might we conclude from this that only bad-tasting butterflies attack birds? We
might, but not so fast. Poisonous or bad-tasting butterflies (animals, for that matter)
advertise their defenses with bright colors. Those small butterflies harassing swallows
at Shoals Marine Lab were plain white or sulphur (I see yellow only under ideal
conditions). And on the wooded edge of a hayfield in Essex, I saw a small white
(yellowish?) butterfly chase a Savannah sparrow, moving quickly enough to dart about
the bird once or twice as it was flying away. (I find it remarkable that a butterfly small
enough to be eaten by a bird has the gumption to fly tight circles around it.)
I’ve spent many hours searching the Web for photos of such incidents, but no
luck so far. That’s the beauty of electronic publishing. I can add them if I get them.

On 12 August 2003 I drove to White Beach in Manchester-by-the-Sea and parked at the

western end. In so doing, I unknowingly dislodged a previous parker, a black butterfly
which flew challenging circles around the front of my car, even striking the windshield.
When I got out of the car, it flew challenging circles around me, sometimes touching
my face and hair. In time it settled back onto the ground, where it resumed its
interrupted mission, apparently to lick up needed minerals. It tolerated me to come
quite close. I find that small animals prefer me as low to the ground as possible, so I
hunkered down and got a good long look at it. It approached within inches of my
outstretched hand, and at one point even walked between my feet. Quite the beauty
it was, black overall with two parallel rows of blue-green spots near the trailing edges
of its wings, and a row of yellow spots along the trailing edges. Estimated wingspan,
from memory, 3 inches. The wingtips have an arrangement of blue, green, yellow and
red spots. I had never before seen this species. Every few seconds it slowly flapped
its wings.
This would have made an ideal subject for my digital camera, but that was in
the car, and I was afraid the butterfly would leave if I went to get the camera. My 35-
mm Nikon was around my neck, unfortunately with a telephoto lens, but I backed off
and took a few shots. The butterfly was in the shade. I hoped to photograph it on a
sunny patch of ground, but every time it flew, it landed on a shady patch.
One shot turned out fairly well, and I show it below. If my description of colors
Unidentified species encountered at White Beach, Manchester-by-the-Sea, Mass.

doesn’t match the photograph, blame my tritanopia.

After I had taken the last shot on the roll, the butterfly flew onto a sunny patch.
Wouldn’t you know. I went to get my digital camera, and sure enough, the butterfly
disappeared.

I later examined hundreds of butterfly photographs on the Web, and two books
of butterfly photographs at a library, but found nothing even close. If you can identify
this species, please e-mail me at gerardbythesea@hotmail.com. I’ll give you credit.

http://oddsbodkins.posterous.com/