A trip to Outer Trial Bank today to count gulls and collect the camera traps I put out last month
😭
also... did I buy magic batteries??
Not when they dive bomb you and steal food. Mind you a few weeks ago, we had 2 on a roof during trojans football training they were really going for it, so the team just applauded when they finished. Kinda funny but once those eggs hatch and the juveniles get out, the parents are even more aggressive, esp if you try and walk past the juvenile.
@sarahdalgulls
Where are you based,? as that looks like Dartmoor
@zleap it's a man-made island in The Wash! https://goo.gl/maps/J9Avp9iW1sCxMq7F9
Ah, so as you go in to Norfolk
@zleap I think it's technically in Lincolnshire.. we walked out from near Sutton Bridge, it's a slog to get there!
Good point, we used to go to cromer on holiday so I remember the road going near to the wash, en route.
The issue is they get used to urban areas being a free source of food, either bins not secured, or people carrying food or just innocently feeding them. The main issue is that human food (chips etc) is probably not good for gulls at all.
@zleap there are other issues, like severe predation at their natural sites pushing them into urban areas. GPS tagging suggests that the birds at natural colonies don't forage in urban areas.
Then, succesful colonies with chicks running around attracts more adult gulls to nest there, so the population increases in the towns, while out in the countryside the chicks are eaten and adults don't go there to nest
@zleap Part of my job is trying to strengthen the protection of their natural sites (like where I was today) so that they can have somewhere to go when they are eliminated from urban areas, and hopefully to stop them all moving to urban areas.