Flocking gulls

My colleague Susan and I have been watching the gulls these past few days, circling above and settling and roosting, I guess, on the ice frosting the Allegheny and the Ohio.

Susan sits far from me in our workplace, but we watch the gulls together because I get up every hour or half-hour or so to move away from my desk. Just to get the blood flowing and give my brain some think time. So I walk to the west wing of the office, where Susan has a desk. From the window behind her, we can see the birds and share our amazement at their numbers and behavior. They nest on the ice or float on it. Circling, drifting. Always fairly late in the afternoon, although that may just be when we notice them as the busy work of the day winds down.

My brother Tim is a self-taught bird watcher and often visits a power plant on Lake Erie, in Lorain, I think, because the plant's discharges warm the lake water. And the birds are opportunists and take advantage of that.

Not sure if the gulls are enjoying any sort of warmth at the confluence of the Monongahela and the Allegheny. Perhaps there is just a nice amount of food there. Whatever the reason, it is mesmerizing to gaze at these birds, floating on thermals, flitting over water, a colony of shifting white on deep gray-green water under January skies.