Climate change may be turning Gulls into Cannibals

Kitsap Sun ^ | 07/23/2016 | Tristan Baurick

[Glad2bnuts]

PROTECTION ISLAND — Jim Hayward slips on a hard hat and pops open an umbrella before stepping into a storm of angry gulls.

Hayward, a seabird biologist based on Protection Island in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, is making his evening rounds through the largest gull nesting colony in the Puget Sound region. He's been monitoring this site since 1987, so he's used to the shrieking, the divebombing, the frequent splatterings of gull poop, and the pecking at his head, hands and feet.

What he's not accustomed to is the cannibalism.

[Salamander]

Years back, I walked out my back door just in time to see a Grackle swoop by with a Sparrow in its claws.

Luckily for the Sparrow, my shriek of anger made the Grackle drop it.

Gulls are rats with wings.

They’ll eat anything.

[rdcbn]

Thank you. My one word response capsulizes your two paragraphs. :)

---

My motto - Never say what can be said with clarity in one brief and succinct sentence when that point can be driven into the ground with 10 paragraphs of rhetorical adequate overkill :-)

[dfwgator]

It begins.....

[Libloather]

Inland killers carrying bats...

[rdcbn]

My ongoing research into the dietary habits of sea gulls, which predates the this authors research by quite a few years, proves beyond any shadow of a doubt the the scientific theory that sea gulls will eat just about anything they can manage to cram down their throats.

They don’t call them flying sewer rats for nothing

[smokingfrog]

Your tax dollars at work.

https://www.andrews.edu/news/2006/9/nsf_grant.html

[TEXOKIE]

Oh my Sainted Aunt Gussie!

[Robwin]

My theory is not that global warming is producing this kind of behavior but rather the gulls ae in too close a proximity to Seattle.

[crazyhorse691]

^he link will not open. I do think the author needs to stop his drug use while he watches how birds react to food opportunities.

[Vendome]

I think Juan de Fuca may be the problem...

[WMarshal]

I think gulls are magnificent in the air but rat-like on the ground. They have always been cannibals with soulless, shark eyes.

[WMarshal]

I work in IT and I can tell you that these computer models are no smarter that the idiots who designed and coded it. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will allow for some more accuracy over time but thes global warming hacks rode on the short bus in grade school.

[JohnnyP]

Years ago we were camping at June Lake. Shirley was grilling steaks on the Coleman. She turned her back for a second and a gull swooped in and tried to fly away with a steak. She was able to shoo him away before he got airborne.

[right way right]

You hit one on the highway, drive back later, and 6 more of his buddy's have met the same fate. That's seagulls.
Seagulls eat from solids and other scum scraped off of sewer treatment ponds. They are sickening rats with wings. I would die of starvation before I would eat one.

[mikefive]

At least some cannibals are smarter than others

[skr]

Gulls have been omnivorous since Adam and Eve were thrown out of Eden. “Climate change” hasn’t made them so. “CC” zealots are not a very bright lot.

[Enterprise]

Gulls just wanna have fu-un.

[broken_arrow1]

Horses too turning into....Unicorns?

[Moonman62]

And as the story continues, it was a calm clear day today due to global warming.

...

Real scientists know that past periods of warmth have always been good for life.

[PLMerite]

"Climate change may be turning Gulls into Cannibals"

Hannibal Livingston Seagull ?