BAP - Black backed and Herring Gull Post-fight - 5

As part of the 2nd year of our course, Marine and Natural History Photography, we had to conduct 2 major assignments at the end of our year, the SDA and BAP projects (Self Devised Assignment and Biodiversity Action Plan projects, respectively).
 For this I completed several shoots, part of this involved collecting images that were protected by the BAP's (not the bacon variety). The aim was to follow and look into the (relatively recent at the time) work by governments across the world to develop a series of Biodiversity Action plans and take these forward to assess which species and habitats were, according to the plan, at risk in an area of a feasible distance to study, focusing both on the species in question and the habitats and producing 2 images of affected species and two of the protected  habitats, this set forward a series of studies into the feasible species to photograph...

One of the species I chose to photograph and the images I used in the end, was of, surprisingly, the Herring Gull, not a species you would expect to be protected under a government scheme, yet an easy one to photograph. The images used contain both the Herring Gull (Larus argentatus) and the less common Greater Black-backed Gull (Larus marinus), pictured here fighting over nesting/roosting space; the Greater Black-backed having a nest on this specific roof, defending it's territory from the other Gulls from the area. 
I think this scene nicely conveys the move by the majority of the Gull population from seaside colonies, to town and city dwelling, causing a lot of havoc for residents in the effected locations, with many either tearing through bin liners or using interestingly adapted tactics to steal food right out of the hands of their human inhabitance. 

This is the last image in the series of the Black-backed and Herring Gull photos, just after the fight, having quickly changed up the settings for one last silhouette image as the sun was really beginning to drop below the horizon, I think my preferred image from the selection, although just not enough in the way of drama and behaviour for the final shot (see others in the link below), hope you like it

Check out more from the two projects here: LINK!