Bandit Gulls.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXIV, Issue 926, 22 November 1933, Page 6

Bandit Gulls.

Nature Notes.

James Drummond,

F.L.S., F.Z.S.

By

\VHILE SKETCHING on the beach at the. mouth of the Mokihinui River, north of Westport, Mr S. A. A. Fry was amused by bandit seagulls that filched pipis from other seagulls. Usually, a seagull picked one of the shellfish out of the sand, rose fifty feet or mor? into the air, dropped it on to the stones, descended swiftly, and had no difficulty in extracting the pipi’s flesh from the shell. The end of the performance was not always satisfactory. Sometimes, as a pipi fell, another seagull, waiting much lower down than the one that took the pipi. darted in, seized the pipi when it struck the stones, and quickly flew off with it. The owner of the pipi, seeing the bandit rush in, set up a loud clatter and gave chase. Out of breath with the noise it made, confused by excitement and fury, or handicapped in some other way, it always seemed to be left behind. In any case, the bandit, as far as Mr Fry saw, always got away with the pipi. He watched scores of these incidents, and there was one end to them all. The following notes were sent by a corespondent from the Ninety-mile Beach, North Auckland, the home of the toheroa shellfish:—‘‘We are gathering toheroas for a canning factory. Seagulls line up all around, waiting for toheroas we may leave uncovered. As soon as we go six or seven yards away, a seagull snatches a toheroa and flies up. When sufficiently high, it stops for a moment, and then releases the toheroa, which drops to the hard ground, and usually breaks open. If it does not break, the seagull repeats the performance. “ A seagull, after releasing a toheroa in the air, seemed to think that bandit seagulls were too close. It descended like a stone, caught the toheroa in mid-air, and flew away with it.”