Seagulls are not ugly, they are adorable!

Leading up to Hallowe'en, I'll be profiling animals that are not normally considered cute. In fact, many people are often afraid of these animals, and I'll be showing how cute they can be!

Cuddling together!

A lot of people find Seagulls to be annoying or ugly, but here are examples of Seagulls being cute and adorable! Many sea birds like to be around one another, and often cuddle together in cute pouffy balls on the beach. 

Seagulls are also very smart, and work together to find food. Some Seagulls even trick fish with food to catch them, the same way that humans use bait when fishing!

Fuzzy!

 Seagulls usually have one partner for their life, meaning that the family stays together. The romantic couple will often lay their eggs in the same location year after year. They work together to build a soft and cozy nest for their babies. The mother Seagull lays about one to three eggs and the parents take turns keeping the eggs warm and safe. When they hatch the baby Seagulls are adorable piles of fluff!

Both the mother and father help to raise the babies, taking turns feeding and protecting them.

Seagulls like to eat a lot of different kinds of food. They are not picky! They often catch fish from the ocean, and also like to eat shellfish, such as clams. In order to open the shells, these birds will fly high in the air and drop the shellfish onto a hard surface, like a rock, and keep doing this until the shell cracks open!

Fuzzy Little Bats!

Leading up to Hallowe'en, I'll be profiling animals that are not normally considered cute. In fact, many people are often afraid of these animals, and I'll be showing how cute they can be! 

So fuzzy!

Many people are afraid of Bats, but they are really cute and fuzzy! Also, the Bats found in Canada, such as the Little Brown Bat, are pretty small, so there is nothing to be afraid of. Bats are Mammals, just like us, which means that the mothers feed their babies milk.

I've seen Bats in Stanley Park, Vancouver, flying around at dusk! They swoop over the Lagoon, catching bugs to snack on. Bats also help pollinate plants, such as Bananas!

Bats love to cuddle one another. They often sleep in giant cuddle piles, consisting of millions of bats!

Sleeping upside down!

Most Bats sleep during the day and are active at night. One of the cool thing about Bats is their ability to sleep while hanging upside down! They curl up into a little ball by wrapping their wings around their body, and then doze off to sleep.

Because Bats often fly around in the dark, they have a special skill, called echolocation, to find their prey. It's too dark at night for Bats to see their food, such as insects, so they make high-pitched noises which bounce back off objects, just like an echo. Bats can understand the echoing noises to figure out where objects are, like trees and bugs. How cool! There are some Bats who do not have this special skill, called Old World Bats. They are bigger in size and like to eat fruit!



Further Reading: Investigating the Role of Bats in Emerging Zoonoses

Dragonfly!



Dragonflies are super cute insects. Because they are insects, they have 6 legs. They also have compound eyes, which means they have thousands of little eyes in one location. Dragonflies can detect movement very easily.








Dragonflies can fly really fast, up to 60 kilometers per hour! As they fly over ponds and lakes, they catch little bugs, like flies and mosquitoes, to eat. Dragonflies can also mate while flying!








Dragonflies have four beautiful wings. Today, while sunbathing next to a pond, a dragonfly landed on me! I could feel its little wings against my skin. A few years ago, a dragonfly landed on me while eating a bug!

Baby Owls!

This is a special post for Marie-Claire, who suggested baby owls.

Cuddle cuddle.

Owls are found almost everywhere in the world, except Antartica and parts of Greenland. These cute birds have big, round eyes, for seeing at night. Owls can rotate their head almost all the way around in a circle!  This helps owls see because they cannot move their eyes from side to side.

Cute little owly hiding in a tree.

Most owls spend their time by themselves, and are usually active at night. They sleep all day and wake up at night to catch rodents and little birds. There are a few owls that fly around in the day, and some that are most active around dawn and dusk.

Some owls have special feathers that make the bird's flight silent! The edges of some of their feathers are jagged, which reduces the noise from the flapping wings. This means that they can sneak up on their food!