Urban seagulls know exactly when to strike to steal your food -- we have the GPS data to prove it You

[Judi Lynn]

You think you're safe, but the gulls know where you are. They're watching.
Mihai Andrei by Mihai Andrei November 11, 2020



Seagulls. Waiting, watching, plotting their next attack. Image credits: Karim Manjra

Cities are unusual habitats. Unlike natural environments, where the interspecies relationships have been chiseled and honed over many generations, cities are noisy, polluted, and weird, built from unwelcoming materials. For most creatures cities are a disaster, completely wrecking any chance of a real habitat. But for a minority of creatures, cities are a godsend.

Just think about rats, seagulls, and roaches — a trio that seems to inhabit every big city on the planet. These creatures (and several others) have not only adapted to urban areas, but they’re often thriving in them. A big part of this adaptation is knowing how to shift their lifestyle based on fluctuations in food sources. Researchers suspected some sort of adaptation must be taking place, but until recently the data had been scarce.

To address this, a team of scientists at Bristol’s Faculties of Engineering and Life Sciences equipped 12 lesser black‐backed seagulls with mini GPS tracker backpacks, recording their behavior at three different settings: a public park, a school, and a waste center. The team also used other observations of gulls at a various number of different sites.

The team found that birds move their foraging patters to closely match the timing of school breaks and the opening and closing times of the waste centre. In other words, they’re not foraging when they’re the hungriest: they’re foraging when they know they have the best chance to find something. Their activity in the park also seemed to correspond with the availability of food sources in the park, but this was not connected to human activity.

More:
https://www.zmescience.com/ecology/animals-ecology/urban-seagulls-food-gps-11112020/

[Cicada]

1. I love videos of gulls brazenly shoplifting bags of chips from mini stores

They waddle in, go strait to the chips, grab a bag and walk right out. Absolutely no intention of paying.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Yes! They know exactly what to do!

English seagull grabbing "crisps"



Seagull photobombs, steals woman's lobster roll
A California woman who was trying to document her first-ever lobster roll literally got a bird's eye view of the sandwich
By SOPHIA ROSENBAUM Associated Press
June 9, 2019, 3:04 PM
• 3 min read



"I was really embarrassed. You hear stories of people taking crazy Instagram pictures and hurting themselves and I was like, 'Oh my God, you are now that person. You just wasted $21.50 for a picture.'"

Jessop started her lobster roll quest Friday afternoon, renting a car after wrapping up a work conference in Vermont and beginning her New England road trip. After a few Google and Yelp searches, she made her way to Fox's Lobster House in York, Maine, buying her $21.50 lobster roll and walking over to the water to take a picture.

"It was the most picturesque place," Jessop said. "You're standing on the seashore overlooking the lighthouse. I don't really take a lot of food pictures, but I knew this needed to be documented."

. . .

https://abcnews.go.com/Weird/wireStory/seagull-photobombs-steals-womans-lobster-roll-63591909