Journal of a Sabbatical

July 11, 1999

strategy

July 11, 1999
Watchemoket Cove

2 common terns
2 ring-billed gulls
6 herring gulls
4 house sparrows
2 starlings
23 mute swans
2 great egrets
24 Canada geese
2 domestic geese
14 mallards
2 snowy egrets
2 lesser yellowlegs

Today's Starting Pitcher: Jin Ho Cho

Today's Reading: none

Nancy and I both seem to be suffering from some kind of fatigue - maybe a delayed reaction to the heat wave or something. Neither of us felt much like doing anything today.

We had breakfast at Andrea's (the Greek restaurant on Thayer Street, not the home of my niece of that name) and browsed in the Brown Bookstore, which has sort of become a Sunday ritual for us. We followed that with a brief browse at College Hill bookstore mainly because I wanted a copy of Rhode Island Monthly, which has a long cover story on Narragansett Bay this month.

Turns out the key thing I found out from Rhode Island Monthly is that Konishiki is coming to the Black Ships festival. This got me really psyched for the festival. Normally they have amateur sumo wrestlers doing the demos and teaching the workshops. They've never had a professional grand champion there, let alone somebody of the stature of Konishiki. So, my annual fix of sumo in Rhode Island should be extra fun this year.

Browsed out, we went to the cove to check on the bird life. Two herring gulls and a ring-billed gull were enacting a complex dominance drama around some smushed bagels on the ground. An adult herring gull claimed the bagels all for itself, loudly chasing away any and all other claimants including house sparrows and starlings as well as the other gulls. An immature herring gull walked cautiously around the outskirts of the bagel area watching the adult all the time looking for an opening and sneaking in to grab some. The ring-billed gull tried a full frontal assault and got chased away again. While the adult herring gull was chasing the ringbill, the immature herring gull dashed in and made off with a huge chunk of bagel. Every time the adult was distracted by an intruder, of whatever species, the juvenile sneaked in. Never once did the juvenile challenge the adult. It really made me wonder to what extent gulls can strategize.