The morning after the storm the gulls at the beach were very active. They probably were pretty hungry and there was plenty of food washed up on the shore.

If you look at the picture closely you may notice a dead fish a little left of center. There are two black backed gulls–an adult and a juvenile and the juvenile is in a threatening stance and is calling loudly, letting the adult know that this is ITS fish and it has no intention of sharing….

In this picture you can see that an adult gull has stepped in close to the fish…the young gull is really strutting its stuff but the adult seems less than impressed….

Check out what is happening here….the adult bird is establishing its superiority….check out the young bird talking back…

and you can see here who won this one…and it was none of the birds that were arguing…but the herring gull that was waiting while all the others were posturing and making a racket….

showing us that those that wait patiently often rush in and win in the end…

As you might imagine the story didn’t really end there….constant bickering and re-positioning occurred and the dominant birds eventually took over the fish carcass, leaving the younger birds to wait their turn from a distance.