Neil Fergusson wrote:

> In terms of that recent thread on gulls eating puffins, I
> must say that I found my Scottish friend's account of Greater
> Black-backeds eating whole puffins "hard to swallow". I am
> interested to see the David Attenborough accounts, however. I
> did once, see for myself, gulls in Scotland swallowing massive
> fish coming off a fishing vessel. Fish, that were roughly on
> the same order of magnitude of the gull's body length (minus
> head and tail, and somewhat thinner).
>
> I imagine that the capture of most falcons is illegal, which
> would limit the activities of most "hobbying" falconers. I
> wonder if gulls can be trained as reasonable substitutes ?


Well t'would appear that GBBG's have a very large appetite. I must have seen
the David Attenborough thing on TV sometime - maybe it was a BIG GBBG and a
small Puffin :-{


Taking ANY wild bird into captivity is illegal in the UK. Only crows can be
killed without a licence on the grounds of being agricultural pests.

The only problem with keeping gulls as pets would be finding enough food to
stop them attacking and eating any small child present. Not much of a problem
if there's a Puffin colony nearby though ....


Stuart MacKay