From Ice Swimmer. Beautiful birds! Click for full size.
All the photos were taken with a cell phone on the Midsummer Day 2016. The birds are a black-headed gull (Choirocephalus ridibundus) and a Eurasian jackdaw (Corvus monedula). The place is the quay of Helsinki Market Square.
© Ice Swimmer. All rights reserved.
Nah, even the pair of them couldn’t carry a coconut.
The Market Square was crowded with tourists on Midsummer Day, people from a cruise ship visiting Helsinki and others, many locals were on the other hand in the countryside. This quay is used by the sightseeing boats that do tours in the Helsinki Archipelago. The harbour basin in the pictures is called Kolera-allas (Cholera basin). The name comes from 1893, when a shipsman from Nauvo (in Finnish)/Nagu (in Swedish) in Southwestern Finland died from cholera during the Herring fair in his ship moored in the basin.
Jackdaw (naakka in Finnish) is gregarious and the was in fact a group of them but other people were photographing them. The black-headed gull (naurulokki in Finnish, laughing gull) and the jackdaw were both eating something from the curb(?) stones. The jackdaw is a fairly small corvid and the black-headed gull
Continued:
The jackdaw is a fairly small corvid and the black-headed gull is a fairly small gull (though bigger than terns). Jackdaws have been getting more common, stereotypically nesting on church roofs and steeples, black-headed gulls (who have a brown head here), on the other hand have declined in Finland in the last few decades. Still, there was plenty of them on the Market Square.
The series of pics made me smile! It looks as if it captures a dance by the two birds.
The naurulokki is gorgeous -- the body looks like beautiful storm cloud.
Were they friends, or were they keeping an eye out for scarce (I say that with some irony) resources? :D
johnson catman & Caine
Thank you. I’ve never thought of the cloud thing but it fits well. Going too close to their nesting areas would get the storm really hit you.
rq & johnson catman
They weren’t really friends, they seemingly ignored each other for a while, then was the brief encounter and turning of the backs. The jackdaw flew over the corner of the basin, but I’m not sure was it me or the gull that was to blame. I’m not sure what the resource was, crumbs and such or sand and little stones.
They have set up nets on top of the café and food stand/truck area of the Market Square to discourage the gulls, but they’re there anyway even if they’re unable to to do high-speed dive maneuvers to steal food from humans. The market square does draw many birds, sparrows scurrying under the café tent tables, gulls and jackdaws (I think I saw some crows, but not very many pigeons) in more open areas. AFAIK, much of the stuff gulls get on the market square is junk food for them, fish, worms, maggots and insects would be much more nutritious than ice cream, sweets and french fries.
I’m having a weird optical illusion about the relative size of the two birds.
BTW, look at the eyes of the birds. Notice anything strange for a bird?
chigau @ 8
The gull was a bit larger than the jackdaw, though the perspective and colour do play their tricks. A small black-headed gull is according to the pfft as long as a large male jackdaw (jackdaws are 34-37 cm long and weigh 180 -- 265 g and bh-gulls are 38-44 cm and 265 g on average).