Defectives

In my business, the replacement parts business, we have a term for those parts for vehicles which come to us with slight imperfections.  We call these parts, "Defectives".  Now, if I were to call someone with some sort of physical flaw a "Defective", I would be a real heel, politically incorrect at the least.  But today, for humors sake, I am going to refer to some Gulls I found while eating lunch at Winchester Bay "Defectives".  These guy were amazing to watch, out of 32 Gulls I had swarming my van while I ate my sack lunch, six were graced with only one leg!

I believe these were all Western Gulls that were pestering me for a handout, and I am really curious about the reasons for their lack of the correct number of appendages.  At first I thought they were all victims of some traumatic event.  Then the more I looked, the closer I looked, I began to think it was a combination of accident and possibly birth defects.  Two of the gulls, had absolutely no right leg at all.  Not even a stub or break in the feathers to indicate a leg had ever been there!  Two had severely deformed right legs, and two had right legs that were missing all or most of the leg below the tibiotarsas.  The latter two, I believe are from injury, it's the prior four that I believe to be some sort of defective.

Here are several photos of these birds for you to judge for yourself.  And by the way, if you know a reason for this, like "Winchester Bay is a repository for screwed up birds" let me know.  I asked a couple of the "natives" and they know nothing of why they may be this way.  Oh and don't feel too sorry for these guys, they were they amazing

 

 

 

 

Sorry for the quality of  these photos.  These birds were very aggressive and tried to fly into my vehicle several times trying to get at my lunch.  As such, I shot through the windows, because, well, I saw "The Birds" and I ain't gonna go for the  Tippy Hedron  treatment!