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Laughing Gull Attacked
- To: carolinabirds@duke.edu
 
- Subject: Laughing Gull Attacked
 
- From: "Nathan M. Bacheler" <nmbachel@unity.ncsu.edu>
 
- Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2003 07:52:08 -0400
 
- Cc: salinda daley <salinda.daley@ncwildlife.org>
 
- Delivered-to: pardo@metalab.unc.edu
 
- Organization: NC State University
 
- Sender: carolinabirds-owner@acpub.duke.edu
 
- User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:0.9.4.1) Gecko/20020508 Netscape6/6.2.3
 
Hello everyone-
Yesterday, as I drove by a small retaining pond near my workplace in 
Morehead City, NC, I noticed a Laughing Gull flapping its wings 
violently on the surface of the water. I assumed that it had a broken 
wing, and pulled over in hopes of bringing it to an animal shelter. Upon 
closer inspection, however, both of its wings seemed to be fine. It 
looked as if one of its legs was caught by something in the water. Maybe 
it caught itself on a fishing hook, perhaps?  Then I saw something 
attached to its left leg.
It was a snapping turtle.
The turtle was approx 10" long, and was holding the bird's leg just 
below its body. My question is this: I realize a large snapping turtle 
could make a quick meal out of a duckling or similarly small-sized bird, 
but could a relatively small turtle such as the one I observed really 
kill a full-sized adult laughing gull. It seemed like the bird would be 
too difficult to drown, and as soon as the turtle let go of the birds 
leg (which, admittedly, could be hours), the bird could easily escape if 
it wasn't completely tired out. Does anyone have any similar stories, or 
know more about snapping turtle predation upon birds?
I took a couple of pictures, but then let nature take its course.  I saw 
no laughing gull carcass the next morning.  If you would like to see  a 
couple of the images, let me know - I can email them to you.
Nate Bacheler
Morehead City, NC