Herring Gull Behavior (1 Viewer)

Herring Gull impressive catch

I recently observed interesting feeding behaviour by a Herring Gull, I am wondering how common this is. I was sitting on the bank of the river Taff in Cardiff. A gull landed on the river, and started diving. It caught a large fish with it's beak, lifted it out of the water, but dropped it immedeately. This was repeated a few times, but the fish was too heavy for it to carry, or it could not get a good grip.

Eventually the gull tried a different tactic, it lifted the fish partially out of the water with it's beak, holding on to it's upper side or maybe fin, and swam towards the shore, so that the fish remained mainly under water and was guided to the shore. After getting the fish out of the water, it was clearly a very large trout or salmon.

The gull then proceeded to eat the fish immediateley by poking the fish violently with it's beak. What a way to go!

Do Herring Gull's often catch such big fish, and use what i thought was quite clever method?

Maybe this is completely normal behavior, but I was impressed!

Hi Gwylan and "Welcome to Birdforum" from all of the Moderators and other staff here.

I've not seen behaviour like this. I doubt it was a healthy fish so perhaps just a good example of opportunistic behaviour?

Cheers,

Andy.

Thanks for the welcome.

I had not considred an unhealthy fish, seems likely now. I suppose that rules out my super-intelligent welsh gull theory!

Hi Gwylan,
Welcome to Birdforum, I once saw a Herring Gull eating a very big crab, it actually rested the crab on the bank and had to keep catching the crab before it fell back into the river!