Getting Mobbed 照片檔

Dozens of Royal Terns were coming in from the ocean with food for their chicks. Not only did they need to find their chick in the crowd, they also had to run the gauntlet before being able to pass the food to their hungry chick. Waiting for them along the shore were Laughing Gulls as well as other terns trying to steal from one of their own. But they don’t have it on the gulls. When the gulls sense weakness, they will mob the tern in the air or on the ground and were, if they got close, usually able to steal the prize or lose it to another gull up to the same mischief. The terns seemed to me to be more agile in the air but not as fast or as strong as the gulls, who were often able to pry the seafood out of the tern's bill after a bit of a struggle. As you can see in this picture, several of the gulls were able to keep up with the tern and were coming in for the heist. When mobbed like this the terns had little chance. (Royal Tern: Thalasseus maximus; Laughing Gull: Leucophaeus atricilla). (Sony a1ii, 100-400 lens with 1.4 extender yielding 560mm, 1/403200 second, f/6.3, ISO 800).