Herring gulls hardly eat herring, but they do fish with bread
Despite the name, herring gulls show no special taste for herring. Their stomachs hold more crabs and sea urchins than fish, and refuse can make up half their diet. They are also inventive: some have been seen dropping bread into ponds as bait to catch goldfish, and others tap-dance on lawns to lure up worms.
The European herring gull is a big, noisy seabird up to 66 centimetres long, with a pale grey back, white head and black wingtips dotted with white spots called mirrors. Adults have a yellow bill with a red spot and a ring of yellow skin around a pale eye. Young birds start out mottled brown and take about four years to reach adult plumage. Its scientific name means decorated with silver, a nod to that grey mantle.
The foot-drumming trick is especially clever. A gull stamps rhythmically for long stretches, in a motion likened to Irish dancing, and the vibrations seem to mimic a digging mole. Earthworms flee to the surface to escape what they take for a predator, and the gull eats them, much as human worm charmers do. Gulls also drop shellfish from a height to crack them, steal eggs and chicks from other birds, rob plovers of their catches and sometimes rinse food in water before swallowing.
Its laughing call is so familiar that in Britain it practically stands for the seaside. The best known sound is the long call, a raucous territorial cry that begins with the head bowed and ends with it thrown back. Chicks beg with a repetitive peep and a flick of the head, and adult gulls in towns sometimes revert to the same gesture when people feed them. Within a flock, males usually win feeding disputes, but females typically choose the nest site.
The birds breed along northern and western European coasts. Their senses are sharp: they see ultraviolet light and have a sense of taste especially attuned to salt and acidity. For all their abundance in seaside towns, herring gulls have been on the UK red list of birds of conservation concern since 2009.
Source: European herring gull
