Over the past few days, much of Britain has experienced its first major storm of the 2016-17 winter season. Its name was Angus – he came, shed copious bucket-loads of rain on us, battered us with hail bullets, and blew away the last of the autumn leaves.
For some species of gulls though, Angus has brought bounty, in the form of a thin layer of surface water on areas of saturated meadows and lawns. Gulls are smart enough to take advantage of this. When it rains, earthworms head to the soil surface to avoid being flooded out, so gulls quickly make a meal of them. But some gulls go one step further: through repeatedly paddling on the wet grass, they cause vibrations which, in turn, cause the worms to think it’s raining even when it’s not so, once again, the worms head to the surface. Result? More gull snacks! It’s fascinating behaviour to watch.
As I only have a free WordPress blog, I can’t upload my video of the gulls performing their rain dance but you can see it here.
earthstar 
Loads of gulls around today, and I knew they came for the worms on the fields but hadn’t known about their ‘paddling’ for them!
By the way, it’s very easy to put a youtube video in a post here (or, indeed, in a comment.) All you need to do is click the ‘share’ button beneath any video on youtube and copy the code that appears. Then in your post, hit the ‘enter key’ on your keyboard to make a new paragraph, then paste in the URL code. Make another new paragraph (it has to be in a paragraph of its own, surrounded by space above and below) and continue your post as usual til you’re ready to publish it. Let’s see if your video will post in my comment:
(If it works, you’ll see it appear as a video on your blog, but only as the share code in edit mode) and in comments on your dashboard.
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It worked! Thanks very much, Val. I tried adding it by the usual method of adding media and wordpress wouldn’t let me. Now I know the trick! 🙂
Btw, an ex-school lab tech friend says she used to do this foot-paddling on the school fields when she needed worms for labs. I told her I want a demo next time I see her. 😉
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Yeah, I’d like to see that, too – tell her to film it! 🙂
Glad the vid worked. (Oh and if you edit your post, you can replace your link with the video.)
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I decided not to edit my post as then your comment would look odd – and we wouldn’t want that! 😉
I’ll know for next time, though. 🙂
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