White Ibis/Laughing Gulls competing for a Blue Crab (Callinectes sapidus)

Among other useless things that seem to be permanently stored in my memory are the lines "First, it is medicinal wine from a teaspoon and then beer from a bottle." And, for some unknown reason, this line emerged from my dwindling storage of memories several times when thinking about creating a blog entry from this series of photos. The line is from the 1962 musical film Music Man starring Robert Preston and Shirley Jones. More about the musical can be found below the last image.
On my recent trip to the Gulf Coast of Texas I was able to capture a number of photos of birds of different species competing for food objects. Readers of this blog and Facebook friends have already heard about some of the interactions. First, it was a Red-tailed Hawk and a Crested Caracara (link) (not medicinal wine from a teaspoon) and then an American Oystercatcher and a Willet (link) (I did have beer from a bottle with some of the delicious seafood available on the Bolivar Peninsula). Now, in this blog entry, it is a White Ibis and Laughing Gulls.

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White Ibis with Blue Crab - North Jetty, Bolivar Peninsula (TX) - November 2019
All the images in this series were taken with an E-M1X Olympus camera with a 300mm f/4 lens and 1.4x teleconverter attached. Settings were 1/2000 sec at f/5.6 with an ISO of 200, 250 or 320.

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Fourteen shots taken within a 20 second interval are shown below. They document the unsuccessful attempt of several Laughing Gulls to steal the crab from the White Ibis. The Ibis is swallowing the crab in the last three shots.

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"First, it is medicinal wine from a teaspoon and then beer from a bottle" is from the song Ya Got Trouble in the 1962 musical film Music Man starring Robert Preston and Shirley Jones. A traveling salesman, "Professor" Harold Hill (Robert Preston), is in River City, Iowa, with the intent of swindling the natives by masquerading as a traveling band instructor. Hill plans to con the citizens of River City into paying him to create a boys' marching band, including instruments, uniforms, and music instruction books. Once he has collected the money and before the instruments and uniforms have arrived, he will hop the next train out of town, leaving them without their money or a band. Hill incites concern among the parents of River City that their young boys are being seduced into a world of sin and vice by the new pool table in town and convinces them that a boys' marching band is the only way to keep the boys of the town out of trouble. This summary is a shortened version of a longer description of the movie and play found on Wikipedia (link).