I responded privately to Mike Hines about this, and he encouraged me to
send this to the entire list. So here goes:
Dear Mike,
Thanks for your mail. Somebody mailed me and told that
foot-trampling
also had been found in the Bassian thrush. I think, though, that that may
be more akin to the foot-trembling of many plovers (e.g. our Northern
Lapwing Vanellus vanellus) and maybe of the Black-headed gulls in our
pastures than to the foot-trampling of coastal gulls on mudflats. I`ve sent
you the two small papers i wrote on the subject almost 20 years ago. they
are basically in Norwegian, though, so won`t be all that able to penetrate.
But you`ll see the tracks. I can not remember having seen similar tracks
made by Silver Gulls in Oz. Foot-trampling in the intertidal has also been
described for the related Hartlaub`s Gull in S.Africa
Interestingly, the Ring-billed Gulls Larus delawarensis, that I
watched
quite a bit during a sabbatical in California, did not show foot-trampling
at all, as far as I could notice, while I have seen the behaviour in
Bonaparte`s Gull, a close relative of the Black-headed Gull.
The larger gulls never seem to foot-trample intertidally,
although
Herring Gulls L. argentatus do trample on pastures. All this is in my old
papers, but it won`t be much accessible to you, I fear. At least the
figures have English captions.
Best greetings from a finally "Christmas-card snowy" Tromsø.
Wim Vader, Tromsoe Museum
9037 Tromsoe, Norway
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