Yeah, seagulls are incredible, especially in resort-y areas where they get used to there being plenty of “human food” out in the open as well as their natural diet (which as you suggest, is pretty much anything that’ll fit down their throats!) I’ve always been mildly offended on their behalf that poor pigeons, which don’t get in anyone’s way and go about their business quietly and peacefully, got saddled with the nickname “flying rats” when there are seagulls in the world…
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Fortunately we don’t have a big population of them, but over the past 15 years or so my Brooklyn neighborhood has become “home” to enough crows or close relatives to be really annoying (if any bird’s “vocalizations” drive me nuts-er than seagulls’, it’s crows’…)
Seagulls are the worst. I was at the beach taking my first bite from a burger when a seagull flew down and snatched the food out of my hand. All I was left with was the single bite I had just taken. Every time I see a tourist feeding them I just want to scream.
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You need a redtail hawk. They eat crows. I have one that lives in my neighborhood now and the crows have vanished. They used to wake me up. I will send you a cool video I took but it is pretty gruesome. Check your messages.
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Wow, that’s hardcore. I never encountered one quite that brazen when I lived on Cape Cod, but every once in a while would have to grab something off a surface quick when an experience-induced sixth sense made me look up just in time to see one starting a nosedive… Fortunately they seemed to have enough sense not to go for more densely-human-populated spaces like outdoor tables, but if you were on the beach or sitting on a random spot on a pier… forget it.
The seagulls here will swoop down and snatch an entire bone in pork chop off the grill tray 
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Talking about birds . I hate doves . That cooing sound starting early in the morning . On and on and on . They would sit up on the telephone pole outside my bedroom . I would chase them away everyday. They would just come back for more . I hate those birds .
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…or a 16 gauge shotgun loaded with #6 shot.
When I was a kid we’d hunt on my Uncle’s farm and he hated crows because they ate his corn. My Father vocalized this ridiculous sounding crow call but they ate it up. We’d stand on the edge of the woods, yes trees in Texas, and blast them as they came over.
He was a great shot a country boy hunting all his life and it didn’t hurt that he was a top turret gunner in a B24 in WWII and with that it meant he was the flight engineer.
He passed along a lot of shooting knowledge and that gun, a Remington Model 11 that must be at least 80 years old and still shoots like a dream.
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I shot more than a few if it makes you feel any better.
I also shot a jackrabbit that my friends wife made into chili and this being Texas no beans were harmed, only the giant rabbit and it was not wasted.
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I had a huge vegetable garden and after working it I’d sit in a chair and have a glass of wine or twenty and the doves would be out and the sounds of them was very soothing, that and the wine of course.
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I was in Rockport, Tx on a fishing trip and I packed up to leave the motel and my car was covered in poop. One or two hits was normal but not that many and it was obvious that the varmints were tourist fed.
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Varmit is a sadly underutilized word.
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There are houses all around me so unfortunately I can’t unload on these things. The red tail is a beast. The crows have disappeared since it came into town. There could be more than one but the one I see is fully mature and quite a specimen. There is another one that buzzes around so quickly that I can’t even get a pic of it. It is some kind of much quicker bird and smaller. This thing swoops down doing crazy speeds so you have a second to react. I’ve never seen it actually catch anything. Cool bird…maybe a falcon species.
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Not where I work, a co-worker and I frequently quote the Goodfellas line from Joe Pesci/Tommy D, “where’s the strongbox you …ng varmint you?”
We both know virtually every line in the picture and bounce them off each other all the time.
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I liked it that Scorsese put his own parents in his movies. That scene in Goodfellas with his mother as Joe Pesci’s mother at the kitchen table was priceless.
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“one dog goes one way, the other dog goes the other way.”
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Living in a coastal town, seagulls I affectionately call rats with wings
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By chance, this appeared concurrently…
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Cool article. I never knew you could train them to go after lasers. If you want to see some crazy stuff look on YouTube and watch the Eagles catching deer.
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