When people gather for outdoor events involving food and drink anywhere near the Tasmanian coast they can expect gate-crashers to arrive at any moment – flocks of gulls looking for a hand-out of food.
A group of friends gathered at the Snug Caravan Park at the end of summer were expecting to be harassed by gulls but one of my readers reporting the event says that the birds were noticeable by their absence.
“Surprisingly there were no gulls present,” said the reader in his email, but this was soon to change.
“Later we moved inside, doors open. Two of our group were celebrating their 70th birthday so a cake was cut and Happy Birthday was sung. Immediately gulls gathered outside the door.”
The reader asked if it was possible the gulls actually recognised the song and associated it with the possibility that there may be food on offer or was it coincidental?
I don’t know if gulls recognise the tune, and words of Happy Birthday, but they would certainly be attracted to music and any noise like laugher which might signify humans having a good time. Gulls would also associate a noisy gathering of humans with food, and the possibility of easy pickings.
The silver gulls are more of a nuisance than a threat, unlike the far bigger herring gulls of Europe that in recent years have become so emboldened, they sometimes steal food from people’s hands.
The herring gulls’ call is the familiar sound of the seaside in Britain – often heard in TV programs like Doc Martin – and the species has increasingly moved into British coastal towns and cities and this in turn has caused an increase in their interactions with humans.
Seagulls are both scavengers and predators. They are also kleptoparasites, meaning they steal food from other species. Gulls in urban environments have adapted this thieving behavior to target humans.
Gulls living in towns are very adaptable and savvy. They even learn patterns of human activity to decide where and when to forage.
A scientist in Britain has conducted a research program to better understand this gull behaviour. Madeleine Goumas of Exeter University noticed that gulls would often snatch food from people by catching them unawares. Previous research had shown that several bird species were attentive to human gaze and she wondered if gulls paid attention to where people were looking. She was also keen to establish if gulls preferred to approach food when they were not being watched.
She designed a study to test this idea, and timed how long it took gulls to peck at a sealed bag of chips she had placed on the ground – once when she was looking at them and once when she was looking away.
She was not surprised to discover that the savvy gulls were reticent to peck at the chips when she was watching them.