landGulls Retrospective '04! (original upload) [landGulls Project]

[TheRavenSinger]

Gulls are extremely elegant birds; truly beautiful flyers. A wonderful tribute video!

[taburineagle]

@TheRavenSinger - Thank you very much for saying so, I'm glad you liked it! Sorry for the late response, been super busy lately!

[taburineagle]

@julebrand63 - Hey Julie, I know exactly what you mean, I love them too! I've been seeing them more often lately, it's so awesome to see them fly around and squawk at each other, especially after a winter where they've been more than dormant in most places. I have seen 2 "hit and run" gulls this year though, one last week and the other the week before that - I absolutely hate finding dead gulls in the parking lots - :(

[sockman071988]

they are soo noisy but cute nonetheless

[taburineagle]

@sockman071988 - They can be noisy, especially when it's a huuuuge flock of them all squawking together, but I absolutely love that sound - :)

[sockman071988]

@taburineagle my me too...it is calming and reminds me of being on the beach

[mrhiide]

the seaside wouldn't be the seaside without these great birds, I luv them :)

[taburineagle]

@mrhiide - So do I!  You're right on that too, it just wouldn't be the same without them.

[jmjulebran]

Nice video.

[jmjulebran]

Our fine-feathered friends mirror human behaviour and remind us we are all connected on this planet Earth and need to learn to live in harmony with each other...

[jmjulebran]

I love seagulls!

[taburineagle]

@jmjulebran - Me too! :)

[jmjulebran]

The gulls are ring-billed gulls where I live..

[taburineagle]

@jmjulebran - Here too! Ours are mostly Ring-billeds, every now and then we see a Herring (although they're mostly juveniles) and I believe I saw a Laughing gull here - once - although I haven't seen any gulls at all in about 6 months :(

[jmjulebran]

LOL..No, the gulls aren't wearing watches..lol..Lately, they have been coming closer to me, where I live, and a local park in Oshawa, Ontario, which is near Lake Ontario..Nobody around seems to like gulls, but I do...I like watching them break open shelled peanuts I feed bluejays and squirrels too..lol....I watch the gulls spread their wings and preen themselves, so they must be warming up to me..I just love them and think they're pretty, interesting birds...Thanks for the email and video.

[taburineagle]

@jmjulebran - Sure, no problem! I don't think gulls are that into peanuts though, they're more omnivorous than seed eaters.  Dog food was suggested to me by another big fan of gulls about 6 years ago -- she told me that it was good for them nutritonally compared to the normal things they would find to scavenge on. I'm not sure if that's true, but they seem to like it!

[jmjulebran]

@taburineagle Hi Taburineagle..One day I fed the seagulls sardines and tuna and today a tunamelt sandwich as I don't like tuna much..lol and I feed them bread and sometimes cheesies and crackers but I know they aren't parrots..lol..but i will try and stick with sardines and tuna... I hope it's good for them..Is cat food good to feed them? I live at the YWCA in Oshawa, Ontario Canada and when I get my own place I am getting a cockatiel...

[taburineagle]

@jmjulebran - That's awesome, I've always wanted an African Grey or Cockatoo - :)

[jmjulebran]

I love gulls..I try and feed them around where I live and talk with them but they won't give me the time of day..i am sad....I'll keep trying though

[taburineagle]

@jmjulebran - Maybe they're not wearing watches? :) Hehe... the more gulls there are in an area, the more brazen they'll be - so if you're trying to get one or two of them to come closer to you, it would help if there are more of them around. Try putting something in your hand and putting it up to the sky - I've had them snatch things from my hand before, but never come close enough to sit next to me.

[jmjulebran]

@jmjulebran Well, I don't really "talk" with them---gulls--- as I just realize what that sounded like---lol...I just like them and nature....

[jmjulebran]

I'm a seagull fan..I just love them and get a kick out of them. Cute birds, smart, feisty and funny.

[taburineagle]

@jmjulebran - Yep, exactly!

[mariojragucci2]

this is a great video displaying many aspects of gull behavior and visuals. Thank you oh so very much.

[MyWildlifeVideos]

Of all the gulls, these have the most beautiful faces. We have one in our wild bird hospital. She's stunning!

[taburineagle]

Oh yeah? That's very cool - I've always loved gulls, they're extremely beautiful birds! As a nature videographer, gulls are definitely my favorite bird, raccoons are my favorite mammal - they both fascinate me!

[freecat666]

no place left for them to live nationally..humanbeing...

[taburineagle]

Ummm... right - although they've been around much longer than I have, and they do live on the shore.

[LionIsa]

Such characters they are much fun to watch Love thier nosies too reminds me of the beach and warm sun n sand everytime ! 5 stars

[taburineagle]

Thanks! I just noticed this comment this afternoon - :) They're definitely characters!

[CarolJWright]

oh, I didn't know that about director account. ...or was that an old setting as well. Remember the uproar when the ten min limit took effect. That's what I have, I think. Guru accounts can also go over.

When I first started doing TY, with video from my regular camera, I sent in the larger screen versions anyway, and when YT went with larger screen, the videos were ready to go. Kewl.

[taburineagle]

I actually started posting vids right *after* the 10 min. thing kicked in, so I never experienced that... :) I always tried to optimize what I was uploading, so that's why I went with the 320x240 route - this file, uncompressed @ full res is more than 2 GBs, compressed is probably more like 500MBs... at the time, that was kind of excessive... :) I'm going to try re-compressing it soon though - hopefully it turns out better!

[CarolJWright]

Now that YouTube allows larger files and screen size, maybe you could recompress this to the higher quality. There's a lot of pixelation, especially on the almost-uniform grey of the pavement. Of course, their ten minute limit remains...somehow you got past that. Enjoyed your love of these birds.

[taburineagle]

Thanks! It's sad more people can't enjoy gulls! That's true, I should try re-compressing this as a 720x480 video and see if that improves things, but the hard part I've run across *pre*-uploading is finding another codec that compresses the pavement to a level where the original upload file doesn't look pixelated. I did a Christmas video of the gulls last year and when I had the chance to compress it, I couldn't find the proper balance of compression vs. size... H.264 works, but barely... :)

[CarolJWright]

When I get back on the Mac (where I work on iMovie), I'll copy my specs for you & email them. It may not be perfect, but I ain't budging for now. With a one gig size limit on videos files now, plus the larger screen size...oh, on something like this, YT is taking your smaller size (480?) and stretching it out to the new larger size, so pixelation is more distorted. Could be the frames per second setting is the problem. Lots of birdwatching videos on my channel.

[taburineagle]

Awesome! I'll check those out in a little bit (I'm going to get some rest for work now :)) I don't think it's the fps setting, with this video, I compressed it @ 320x240 because at the time, the higher-quality videos on YouTube were unheard of. Lately, I've been taking my 720x480 DV videos and just re-compressing them in H.264 @ 5000Kbps or so - that does *great* for DV, but not so much for HDV, which has a larger resolution.

[taburineagle]

Let me know which settings you use if you get a chance to check... oh! The 10 minute limit - I got over that because I have a Director account. Back in the day, that got rid of the 10 minute video-length limit, I'm not sure if it still does. I have one video on here that's 32 minutes long!

[lowell123]

this video has changed my view on gulls but i just hate how they take my bait for fishing (shrimp) when im not looking :P but it doesnt really bother me :D

[taburineagle]

That's good to hear! Thanks! They can be annoying sometimes, but they're really not bad birds. Maybe there's some kind of container you could use to keep them out of the bait - :)

[lowell123]

i think its because i give em shrimp when im fishing :P but its cool i like them being around i dont get poop bombed on

[taburineagle]

That's good! :) I've been doing gull videos for the greater part of a decade now, I've probably shot over 200 hours of video total, and I've *never* been poop-bombed by them! Now the *car* is another story, but that washes off easily... :)

[mariojragucci]

The ocean-going gulls in Seattle are larger than these inland ones. Once I saw an immature gull run over in traffic trying to scavange. Someone told me that orcas harm gulls that water-land near them if the orca is curious.

[taburineagle]

I've seen a video or 2 of whales catching gulls, but I think that's a rare thing. I'm guessing that Seattle gulls are predominantly Herring gulls? Most of ours are Ring-Billeds, which are (almost) half the size of a Herring - every once and a while, I see a juvenile Herring (very rarely do I see an adult one) and they are HUGE compared to the Ring-Billeds! That's sad about the juvenile that was run over, but I've seen a few morons here that aim for them, so that doesn't surprise me... :(

[ALBACELTS]

that happens to all animals was just wondering cos i dunno just was lol

[taburineagle]

That's true... :) I've seen a LOT of people buzz gulls before - completely intentional... I haven't seen that happen many times with deer... :)

I'd guess that raptors, foxes and other predators like those would be the main gull predators, but we don't have many of any of those, so man is the apex predator in this case.

[ALBACELTS]

y do they swoop at people and do they have any natural preditors? (in towns)

[taburineagle]

They don't divebomb that often here, because I think they're used to being fed by people that come by. When there's less food, there's more competition - they get more brazen - that's why they swoop... that and territory issues - if you're in their territory, they don't like that!

The main predator of gulls here is morons in cars driving over them - I've seen quite a few dead gulls from people that think it's "fun" to do that... I would think raptors too, but I've never seen that happen here.

[looktheresaseagul]

Great video! I'm looking forward to watching the others :D (And telling my friends I'm not the only person who does such things)

[taburineagle]

Thanks! I have all *kinds* of other gull videos on YouTube, but I stopped adding them awhile ago, because people didn't really seem into them... It's cool to meet someone else that's as into gulls as I am! :) I've been getting video of our local gulls for the past 7 years, and I usually end up with 10-15 edited DV tapes full of great shots...

[taburineagle]

...I've been meaning to edit together a "best of 2005" video too, but I've never gotten around to it yet. I should look back through those and find some more cool shots to add here... :) Just search for "landgulls" - most likely you'll find my videos!

[ALBACELTS]

y do u like gulls?

[taburineagle]

I just think they're cool - I love the way they act, I love the way they vocalize, and they're just very beautiful birds... they're interesting birds to me! And I've never been crapped on by one yet, so I don't have that going against them... :)