Sorry, since I'm sitting here in a writing mood (forget about getting
accomplished what I'm supposed to be getting accomplished right now) I just
had to write something in response to Michael Price's last posting about
the predatory gull. It was an amazing story, but it cries for further
comment.

First of all, I'd like to give the gull a prize for its attempt to cut down
on Rock Dove populations, although I'm sure it isn't making a dent in them.

Second, all large gulls (those pink-legged ones that drive us crazy with
identification problems) are accomplished predators, and you could fill a
movie with the things they do that--if blown up full-screen--would be great
competitors for Jaws or Night of the Living Dead. Basically, they'll eat
anything they can subdue, and they'll subdue anything they can in any way
they can. Jaegers and skuas--close relatives--are the same. You've seen
them in the penguin flicks.

Third, everybody has to eat to live, and this ghoulish ghull just figured
out a better way to do it (its version of Building a Better Mousetrap). I
have to admire its bird-brain brilliance. I myself was really disturbed
when I heard a story some months ago about the police being called in to
shoot a Glaucous-winged Gull in downtown Seattle that was preying on park
pigeons! I don't know the details of its hunting strategy, but it's obvious
the Vancouver gull is not the Lone Ranger. The sacrifice of a native bird
as a palliative to the sensitivities of people who like park pigeons really
made me burn. Would someone shoot one of the downtown peregrines because it
is a pigeon fancier? Guess what--the only difference is in PR. Or maybe
not--maybe the same sort of person as those who shoot abortion-clinic
doctors is lurking somewhere with a shotgun....

Four, this "heinous behavior" is not restricted in any way to gulls. There
has been much in the avian media about a Common Grackle somewhere back east
that has learned to catch and eat migrant songbirds in the park where it
lives when they come through in numbers, a bit disoriented and tired. And I
watched Cattle Egrets on the Dry Tortugas in Florida lurk by the only
source of water and pick off migrant passerines that came to drink there
one after another; after all, there was little else to eat there, and both
egrets and passerines often died of starvation. And damnit, there really is
no difference between a hawk eating a chickadee and a chickadee eating a
caterpillar--except for an erroneous (in my opinion) attitude that
caterpillars should be eaten but birds shouldn't.

I am fascinated during field trips when we see, for example, an eagle catch
a coot, and 50% of the people are saying how great it is to see nature in
action, and 50% are emotionally shaken to see a bird (even a coot) killed.
Sometimes I think if I could accomplish one thing as a teacher of natural
history, it would be to convince people that death is a normal (and thus
acceptable) part of life. Parenthetically, one of the most wonderful and
terrible things I've seen in my life was watching a polar bear kill a
walrus this summer. The sight of that much red blood staining white ice and
blue water *was* disturbing, but I don't think any of the 40 people who
watched it ever thought "that shouldn't have happened." What is going on
out there every day, in fact, is eagles eating coots and gulls eating
pigeons (if they're smart). And it's probably better to be taken by a
predator in the prime of life than to waste away of disease. Maybe there's
a lesson here for people too....

Whew, that really pushed one of my buttons; it's your fault, Dan, for
giving me such a convenient soapbox.

Dennis Paulson