Rag n scrag n dag nab it! I keep posting comments on the wrong pages before I notice that I haven’t checked the updates. I posted to the page that had Squish in the green fairy costume before I looked and noticed that I was not one, but three or four days behind. UGH!
Seagulls and pigeons are both pretty much obnoxious eating machines. But at least pigeons don’t (often) swoop down out of nowhere and steal things right out of your hands if given half a chance. That’s what makes seagulls the worst birds in my opinion.
As someone who grew up in a seaside town can vouch, seagulls are particularly bold everywhere.
For example, my grandma lives on the 8th floor in a building set on a cliff overlooking the commercial harbour of Constanta, Romania, on the Black Sea (stunning vistas all around). Her across the hall neighbor made some meat pies and left them on the balcony to cool down – five minutes later, one had been relocated, plate and all, to the roof of a warehouse 100 yards away and the seagulls were gorging it down. How exactly they carried it, we never found out.
Yeah, I’d call seagulls rats because of their boldness. Pigeons are more mice– they eat what they find, and skedaddle if they think they’re going to get caught.
Then you escape inland, thinking you’ve found safety in the mountains, only to discover Gray Jays and Clark’s Nutcracker: The much-dreaded Camp Robbers. Cute beggars, but utterly shameless.
I once saw a seagull trying to eat a seastar. It couldn’t get it through its head that the seastar’s arms were preventing the gull from swallowing the body of the seastar, and made continual attempts. Considering how little nutrition there is in a seastar, I wonder that the gull was making the effort.
Wow… You guys feel pretty strongly about seagulls… & jays. Whatever you think of them… They are fun to watch…. I have never seen any gull eat anything exotic… Just tear at McDonald’s take-out bags in parking lot. Certainly not meat pies or star fish.
We have Steller’s Jay’s where I live, I hear them all the time but only see them occasionally. That first call they make is oh so annoying. It gets even worse when the local squirrels decide to make similar noises and wind up sounding like they are trying to retch up acorns.
That’s why I liken pigeons to rats and seagulls to raccoons. Rats usually tend to scurry away but some raccoons are pretty darned bold – and more clever than most rats, watch them figure out how to get around whatever you’re doing to try keeping them out of your trash bins.
There is a crow that I am on speaking terms with – cheeky blighter, with a sometimes vocabulary. (He used to say HelloOo’ an awful lot, before he realized that female crows are more interesting than humans.)
Not only has he taken food from me, he has brought me ‘gifts’. 🙂 I have no idea what I am going to do with a child’s sock, but I can’t throw it away, it was a gift…. 😆
Turned out that he was a rescue bird, and had been taken up when he had an injured leg – it took him about a week to realize that people meant easy food….
The Auld Grump, I call him Crazy Crow, Muriel called him Felicity until she started calling him Felix – she saw him a courtin’….
Rats with wings
Nah, pigeons are the rats with wings … seagulls are more like raccoon-caliber.
Seagulls: worst birds or worst birds?
Rag n scrag n dag nab it! I keep posting comments on the wrong pages before I notice that I haven’t checked the updates. I posted to the page that had Squish in the green fairy costume before I looked and noticed that I was not one, but three or four days behind. UGH!
Seagulls and pigeons are both pretty much obnoxious eating machines. But at least pigeons don’t (often) swoop down out of nowhere and steal things right out of your hands if given half a chance. That’s what makes seagulls the worst birds in my opinion.
Seagulls are the FSA of the bird world but geese are nastier.
As someone who grew up in a seaside town can vouch, seagulls are particularly bold everywhere.
For example, my grandma lives on the 8th floor in a building set on a cliff overlooking the commercial harbour of Constanta, Romania, on the Black Sea (stunning vistas all around). Her across the hall neighbor made some meat pies and left them on the balcony to cool down – five minutes later, one had been relocated, plate and all, to the roof of a warehouse 100 yards away and the seagulls were gorging it down. How exactly they carried it, we never found out.
Yeah, I’d call seagulls rats because of their boldness. Pigeons are more mice– they eat what they find, and skedaddle if they think they’re going to get caught.
Then you escape inland, thinking you’ve found safety in the mountains, only to discover Gray Jays and Clark’s Nutcracker: The much-dreaded Camp Robbers. Cute beggars, but utterly shameless.
I see your seagulls and pigeons and raise you…. Canada Geese!
Steller’s Jays.
Do all that sort of stuff and sound… well here.
I once saw a seagull trying to eat a seastar. It couldn’t get it through its head that the seastar’s arms were preventing the gull from swallowing the body of the seastar, and made continual attempts. Considering how little nutrition there is in a seastar, I wonder that the gull was making the effort.
Wow… You guys feel pretty strongly about seagulls… & jays. Whatever you think of them… They are fun to watch…. I have never seen any gull eat anything exotic… Just tear at McDonald’s take-out bags in parking lot. Certainly not meat pies or star fish.
The jay video reminds me of the campus of UCSC.
We have Steller’s Jay’s where I live, I hear them all the time but only see them occasionally. That first call they make is oh so annoying. It gets even worse when the local squirrels decide to make similar noises and wind up sounding like they are trying to retch up acorns.
@Pasha
That’s why I liken pigeons to rats and seagulls to raccoons. Rats usually tend to scurry away but some raccoons are pretty darned bold – and more clever than most rats, watch them figure out how to get around whatever you’re doing to try keeping them out of your trash bins.
There is a crow that I am on speaking terms with – cheeky blighter, with a sometimes vocabulary. (He used to say HelloOo’ an awful lot, before he realized that female crows are more interesting than humans.)
Not only has he taken food from me, he has brought me ‘gifts’. 🙂 I have no idea what I am going to do with a child’s sock, but I can’t throw it away, it was a gift…. 😆
Turned out that he was a rescue bird, and had been taken up when he had an injured leg – it took him about a week to realize that people meant easy food….
The Auld Grump, I call him Crazy Crow, Muriel called him Felicity until she started calling him Felix – she saw him a courtin’….