They have been watching us for decades. Watching our movements. Study our behavior. Track your daily routine. To steal our food.
Scientists tracking these birds have found that seagulls are so well adapted to human urban environments that they know exactly where to forage and, more importantly, when.
In one of the United Kingdom's most gull-infested cities, these shrewd birds figured out when the local school was on break and changed their meal times accordingly.
Shortly before the mid-morning break and afternoon, as students begin to unpack their goodies in the school courtyard, a variety of seagulls can be seen sitting on the rooftops of the surrounding houses and waiting for the children to arrive.
Scientists counted the highest number of birds at 11:15 and 12:45, when the schoolyard was most crowded with children. Breaks at school were at 11 am – 11:20 am and 12:20 pm – 1 pm.
“On our first day at school, the students were delighted to tell us about the seagulls attending their school at lunchtime,” said Anouk Spellled, who studies the behavior of urban nesting gulls at the University of Bristol.
“Indeed, our data showed that seagulls were present in large numbers, not only at lunchtime to get the leftovers, but just before school and during the first break when the students were eating.”
Despite its apparent ubiquity in cities around the world, very little is known about the behavior of urban gulls. In a park or schoolyard, one of these birds is probably watching you, and if you sit down to dine, there are more than a few.
Most of us know these birds as annoying and daring scavengers, burrowing piles of garbage and snatching food from our hands. But while we know how they affect us, relatively little is known about how we affect them.
Previous research has shown that gulls use multiple sources of human waste, including food waste and fishing waste, but it is not yet clear how the timing or location of this waste affects bird behavior.
The ability to predict when human food will become available may be one reason why these birds have begun to thrive in cities around the world, despite declining numbers in the wild.
Seagulls can predict when human food sources will become available, allowing them to conserve the energy they need to actively search for food, as well as adapt to the sprawling human cities and lack of wild habitats.
The research is published in Ibis.
