Wandering Lizard
Russia

A Trip to Russia - Our Escort - Spring

Everywhere we went we were accompanied by squadrons of well-manered gulls. There were two types - one had a pure white countenance while the other sported a very fashionable dark brown/black visage. They were both adept at fishing and their graceful aerobatics were a constant delight. I asked our guide the name of the gull with the black face and was told that they were called "Lake Seagulls." I later queried a knowlegable ornithologist through a good friend of mine who maintains contact with scholars in various fields of study and learned that my new bird might well be the "Small Gull" (Hydrocoloeus minutus). I later looked him up and found that he breeds in northern Europe in the warmer months and spends his winters in the Mediterranean. During his trip south he apparently travels incognito. His head goes white and he sports a dark cap with an eye-patch. (Now I must make a trip to the Mediterranean in the summer. He has to be the Beau Brummel of gulls.)

At first I thought that our escorts might be following us to scavenge waste from the ship, but then I realized that they were after very small fish that were brought to the surface by the vessel's passage. Sometimes while transiting very shallow water or while we were in one of the canal locks the activity was particularly frenetic, but usually the flights stayed to one side or the other of the ship and individual gulls gracefully and tirelessly swooped and soared around us. Beautiful, unless you were a very small fish close to the surface.

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