The Birds

[fishinchicks]

Not a great shot, mostly just grabbed the camera and shot without checking my settings. I didn't want to spend too much time out in the yard, since we are spreading hog manure all around our place today.

This is a typical scene when chisel plowing in the fall - hundreds of gulls landing directly behind the digger eating seeds, grubs, or whatever suits their fancy. These birds stretched for over half the length of our 1/2 mile field. Usually I am the one in the tractor, so I can't get the picture. It is cool to watch them landing and swirling around the cab.

[Steve Foss]

Nice shot, chicks! Generally in that part of the state, the gulls that follow the plows are ring-billed and Franklin's gulls, with a few Bonaparte's gulls thrown in during migration.

Very neat scene.

[fishinchicks]

I know there are a few different varieties of gull. When they buzz you in the tractor, you can see their markings up close! There was one gull with a deformed foot that I watched for about three years. Didn't see it last year, though.

[MN Shutterbug]

Cool capture of one of nature's spectacles of SW MN. This is a familiar site around here. It almost reminds me of the classic "The Birds" by Alfred Hitchcok, especially when they all take to the air.

[Steve Foss]

I'm kinda thinking that's what fishinchicks had in mind with the title to her thread, Mike.

Hmmmm, does fishinchicks look at all like Tippi Hedrin? Sorry chicks!

[MN Shutterbug]

She doesn't look old enough to me to have ever seen that show.

[fishinchicks]

I learned about that show in history class...

There is a HSOforum that shows three gulls in a picture from the movie. Thought that was funny. The movie came out four years before I was born. However, I have seen enough snippets of it to refer to it in the title of my post.

[Steve Foss]

Hmmm, born in '67 eh? I won't even ask when your black-year 40th birthday is (was). Mine came and went a few years back.

"The Birds" should be required viewing for any high school student. That'd jazz up the high school psychology elective class. Forty years later it's still one of the most frightening movies around. If I was as good at photography as Hitchcock was at scary moviemaking, I'd be retired and living off the fat of the land by now.

Uh, chicks, when you're up in the cab of the Versatile (sorry, don't know tractor brands anymore after leaving N.D. all those years ago) and the gulls are swarming, I bet you don't open the door. Does your tractor come with the gull beak-proof polycarbonate window option?

[fishinchicks]

Uh, chicks, when you're up in the cab of the Versatile (sorry, don't know tractor brands anymore after leaving N.D. all those years ago) and the gulls are swarming, I bet you don't open the door.

If the tractor door gets opened, you automatically become a target. I believe it is their favorite game.

BTW, the red tractor is one we rent. It is a Case/International. We normally have all green (john deere) tractors.

[Steve Foss]

Weren't Versatile tractors red, too?

I remember the motto of one central North Dakota implement dealer: "If you got red tractors and you got green tractors, it's Christmas colors all the way to the bank, baby!"

Well, he only said that in the bar after a few.

[Dbl]

Cool shot!

[marine_man]

Weren't Versatile tractors red, too?

Red with Yellow:

marine_man