earlier this year there was a nest of herring gulls on my neighbor's roof. while they were exceptionally noisy the three that survived made up for that by putting on a good show as they were growing. here are some shots of two of them busy doing some hard core preening.
the youngsters had three main activities- begging for food and eating, sleeping and of course preening. maybe that was four🧐
anyway these two were hard at it regularly
while the third one seemed to prefer sleeping
it looks comical with the feathers on the underside of the wings in total disarray. i wonder if it is because they haven't quite gotten the technique down yet or maybe since these shots were taken before they could fly the feathers were still developing. maybe it itches when new feathers form, like dogs teething.
luckily the birds were mostly on our side of the chimney which made a great backdrop with good lighting.