Seagulls and thunderstorms

We're getting a thunderstorm! And, you know how I know this? I'm hearing the seagulls. They came inland. They only do that when a huge change in air pressure is coming. We don't usually get so many gulls in Hamburg, which may be surprising since Hamburg, after all, is a port city - but, we're far inland. Also, gulls attempting to eat fish from Hamburg's port would die from heavy metal poisoning sooner or later. Gulls are stupid, but not that stupid. They understand the difference between food and industrial waste. So, we don't have a large population of those. If the air is filled with SCREEEEECHHH? Yeah. Thunderstorm coming in. The weather model, of course, still predicts sunshine and a continuation of the current heatwave until at least tomorrow. But, I've found seagulls pretty reliable sources in the past... If they can be bothered to travel inland, they usually have a reason.

The scientific explanation I've read for this phenomenon is that gulls want to avoid being carried out to sea by the wind, but, I've always doubted that, for several reasons:
- Seagulls are pretty stupid (I think I've mentioned in a previous post that they're, basically, feeding machines), but, the North German coastline offers enough cruel and unusual geography to find shelter from a storm, in case a bird is looking for that in the first place.
- For that matter: being carried out to sea for a week or two won't kill a seagull. It's a sea bird. It only needs the coast for breeding and for robbing tourists.
- The wind is usually coming from the sea. The only place it will carry a bird is... Yeah. Inland. Speaking as a scientist: dear fellow scientists, you should have been able to spot this... Really. This is not rocket science...
- Seagulls don't look for shelter. (Strategic retreat, what's that?!?) If anything, they'll attack those unfriendly clouds right back, or, at least, give them a warning screech or two! If they don't withdraw at that immediately, it'll be their own fault!

Having met some seagulls... My personal suspicion is a certain combination of laziness and greed on their part. Speaking as someone trying to put herself into the shoes of a seagull: whoopsies, bad weather for flying is coming. Fishing is bad with the sea misbehaving like this, too. I could take shelter now. If I do that, however, I won't be able to find any tasty food while this whatever thing is going on. That's bad! Better get in front of that thing, stay where I can fly and EAT EAT EAT!






This is a bird I met last Sunday at the beach in Lübeck-Travemünde. This gull (a young one; not older than a year) was not screeching: the soundless open beak is Seagull Universal for 'put some food in there right now'. Also, it got very close, happily hopped around me, and even jumped on my outstretched legs when I was pretending to be asleep. (I wanted to see if it was going to go for my bag. Spoiler: YES. Also, yes, I have thoroughly disinfected everything the bird came into contact with.) Not very afraid of humans - just, fortunately, (if only barely) wary enough not to actually directly attack me for my breadsticks. Still, I have no doubt that, if I'd been Some Hapless Tourist (TM), it would happily have let me hand-feed it. Definitely used to humans as a source of good stuff! (It's salivating, too...)

... Oh, by the way: at the time I'm finishing typing this up, it just started to rain. Hooray!

Seagulls 1 : 0 Weather Forecast

I appreciate the fact that these stupid birds are still smarter than the weather forecast. Speaking as a computational modeller, here: if that's all your model can do, please scrap the whole thing and start over... With a bird observation post. Or, for that matter, with just occasionally opening your f*cking window, which is healthy practice even for programming nerds.

Seriously. The gulls saw this coming a few hours ago - at the very least! (If you're wondering about the technicalities of that now: a train takes about 45 minutes between this place and the nearest part of the coast. Gulls are fast - surprisingly so - but they won't overtake a train, not even with tailwind and with the shoddy maintenance Deutsche Bahn is doing on the tracks. They're also not smart enough to just ride on the train roof. Crows and some exceptionally lazy bright pigeons can do that - there's enough technical stuff on a train roof to offer safe places to hide from the traveling wind - gulls can't. Have I mentioned how gulls are stupid? Anyway, my best guess is, it'll take at least two hours of high-speed gull flight.)

EDIT: Just to be thorough, I'm also adding a picture of a grown-up gull.



Cute, huh? (Hint: this one is in a wary stance, like, it's pondering, 'can I just dive on that picnic blanket or is this camera thing in the human's hand dangerous?' It's pretending very hard not to pay attention to me at all, but, it's clearly keeping track of the potential food source very closely while walking around me in large circles. It's also not very good at deception, but hey, seagulls really are remarkably stupid. Spent almost twenty minutes not-watching me until it realized that, nope, no feeding is happening there!)

BWAHAHA! Animal Protection, How Not To

Unintentional joke of the day: this guide on how (not) to feed crows. I'm amazed. Among other pieces of pretty useless advice (of which the only pieces that are not incorrect are so obvious they shouldn't need mentioning), it contains this gem:

"
Was dürfen Sie an Krähen auf keinen Fall verfüttern?
Rohes oder gekochtes Fleisch aller Art. Es können darin Krankheitskeime sein, die für Krähen tödlich wirken.
"
(Translation: "What should you never feed to crows? Raw or cooked meat of any kind. There may be disease germs in it, which are fatal for crows.")

I'm... amazed. Like, uh... Has this writer ever met a crow? Do they understand a crow's natural feeding behavior? Like... Do they understand what the euphemism 'feeding the crows' stands for, and why? These birds are not vegetarians. (Hint: they're carrion birds. They eat meat all the time, including meat that has been dead for quite a while, and not stored in a particularly hygienic environment.) It's correct that you probably shouldn't feed them cooked or cured meat (but, who the heck would try and feed processed food to wildlife in the first place, anyway?!?), but, that's because of salt and stuff - I assure you, the meat itself doesn't kill them. Of course, it's also true that you don't have to feed crows with meat (or, really, any other food) because they're smart enough to find enough of that on their own (and also, meat that's hygienic enough humans can eat it is valuable, takes a lot of resources to produce, and shouldn't be wasted like that). But, really - ACKHHHH.

Other pieces of grossly incorrect advice include the suggestion to give them apples. Apples are really unhealthy, and the core with the apple seeds (which, unfortunately, is usually what's thrown to the birds) even toxic for crows. (They're very sensitive to cyanide compounds, even in low concentration - don't give them almonds, either!) Of course, crows are smart enough to just not touch that stuff even if it happens to be lying around... Unless they're starving. Which, in a big city, they're usually not. But, if you're going to feed them fruit - which, again, is a waste, but whatever - stick to berries and other stuff crows will actually eat voluntarily... And keep it to a minimum, because this sh*t is sugar-rich and should not play a big role in a healthy crow's diet. (No worries, though: most likely, they'll just ignore fruit in favor of tastier food, anyway! Trying to get a crow to eat an apple is kind of like trying that with a toddler: Very Unlikely To Succeed.)

And, again: feeding crows, beyond the 'polite' minimum needed for communication with these lovely birds, is pretty unnecessary. Exchanging food is a social thing for them, but, usually (unless it's a particularly bad winter), they don't actually need extra stuff from humans to survive! Also: if you give food to a crow, don't be surprised if it tries to feed you right back... And with pretty gross things, too! XD XD XD Again: they're carrion birds...