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To any birders or others on NatureNS: I just received this e-mail sent to someone else in UK, copied to me, from an entomologist friend Roy who lives near York and who has been very helpful in acquiring UK flies for me in the past. It describes the killing of one GBB gull by another which he'd never seen before and which he thought was a very rare event: he's in his 80s so has been around as a naturalist for a long time which obviously counts. I'm not sure if the water mentioned was the sea or more likely refers to a hide next to a reservoir or lake, but I could find out. He should be interested in either negative or positive results: negative info from experienced long-time birders would be useful, meaning that it was indeed a very rare event, while I suppose that anyone who had witnessed a similar attack would help bolster his case. If anyone recalls published references to such attacks, that would be a help. From what he wrote, it doesn't sound as if this could be interpreted as a contest over food, territory or a mate, just general belligerence which is odd. Fights over real resources are not uncommon among animals, but most such contests are ritualistic and end with one combatant deferring to the other and withdrawing to safety so neither gets hurt. The standard evolutionary explanation given for such contests being ritualized is that if two more-or-less equal contestants 'decided' to fight to the death, even the eventual victor might also be so badly injured in the fight as to be less likely to survive and compete with his more cautious conspecifics, who would have the advantage in propagating their offspring (carrying 'cautious genes'; count humans out of this explanation, though). If anything interesting turns up here, I can summarize it and send it to Roy. Steve (Halifax) srshaw@dal.ca ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ His e-mail [inserts in square brackets from me]: "Late this afternoon I witnessed a protracted fight between two adult GBB gulls [presume GBB means Greater Black-Backed] on the water in front of Crosslands hide. One of them eventually died and the victor swam away leaving the corpse floating – so you will know how it met its end when you see it! It was all rather brutal and gory, but an interesting piece of bird behavior, and possibly unrecorded. I can find no reference to intra-specific killing in this species in my fairly extensive library, nor any mention of it on ‘the web’. So I have had a word with John Mather (of ‘The Birds of Yorkshire’ etc), and he told the that he had never heard of this and suggested that I write it up for publication. I propose to submit it to ‘The Naturalist’ as a brief ‘field note’. I will send you a draft in due course. I mentioned this incident to Mike Bayldon as he was about to leave NC this afternoon and he told me that he had witnessed an almost identical killing at NC some time ago, but on that occasion it was on one of the bankings. [possibly NC is North Carolina?] Have you had any other reports of this behaviour?"
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