
There are clusters of Gulls resting on our Bay – (Gulls, my Favorite bird – some day I will do a photo essay for this blog on the beauty and interest of Gulls)

There are clusters of Gulls resting and waiting on my rock pile – a rock pile placed up bay from our dock – there to protect the dock from wind blown chuncks of ice in the spring “Break-Up”

Did you know?: Herring Gulls have the shown red on their bill Herring Gulls prefer drinking freshwater, but they’ll drink seawater when they must. Special glands located over the eyes allow them to excrete the salt that would otherwise dehydrate most animals. AND During courtship, males feed their mates, losing fat reserves in the process. AND An adult Herring Gull was spotted bait-fishing. It floated bits of bread on the surface of a Paris pond and attacked goldfish feeding on the bread. It ate none of the bread itself, indicating deliberate tool use. All this from a Cornell University web site”

A closer look – Oh, this is my favorite bug – a Shad or May Fly – Look at the pattern in their wings – A ladies blouse or a man’s beach shirt with that pattern would sell well at any department store – Oops – I just dated myself – I mean on-line store!

Down by our dock – looking down – Some are hatched and some waiting to stretch out their wings. Did you know Shad Fly nymphs will spend up to a year underwater before they emerge as an adult. During this stage, the nymph will crawl out of the water by clinging on to a plant. It will then split its skin (called an exoskeleton) and a winged adult will emerge and take flight. Adult mayflies are not good flyers and cannot escape predators. Therefore, they have evolved a strategy to “evade” predators. The adults will time their emergence at the same time so that millions of them will appear. This essentially overwhelms predators, which cannot eat all the mayflies, and therefore many of the insects survive. The role of adult mayflies is to mate and lay eggs before they die. In fact, adult mayflies do not have mouthparts and die several days after they have emerged. Hence, we do not have to be afraid of them since they cannot bite!
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