looking into seagulls.

After Dianna and Val had suggested they want a seagull theme and Dianna has sent us seagull music made on the guitar i felt the best thing to do would be to look at seagulls particularly there behaviour and how i could incorporate that into doing something animated with the birds. these are some facts i found out:

• medium to large birds
• grey, white, black
• harsh wailing, squeaking calls 
• longish bills, webbed feet 
• most are ground nesting carnivores which will take food or scavenge opportunistically
• crabs and small fish
• unhinging jaws which allow them to costume large prey
• most are coastal or inland rarely venturing out to sea
• up to 4 years to attain full adult plumage, but 2 years is typical for small gulls
• large white headed gulls are typically love lived birds with a maximum age of 49 years recorded
• nest in large densely packed noisy colonies
• lay 2-3 speckled eggs in nests 
• the young are precocial being born with dark mottle down and mobile upon hatching
• complex methods of communication and a highly developed social structure
• display mobbing behaviour, attacking and harassing would be predators and other intruders
• no gull is a single prey specialist
• prey can be obtained in the air, on land or on water
• gulls are monogamous 
• divorce of mated pairs does occur but it apparently has a social cost that persists for a number of years after the break up
• most gulls breed once a year and have predictable breeding seasons lasting three to five months
• exsiting pairs re-establish their pair-bonds and unpaired birds begin courting
• nest are usually built on the ground 

I also found out that the seagulls we have over on the south east cost are called european gulls.