Seagull Attack!

[craigt2000]

Either way' date=' that is [b']no justification for the "get rid of the human vermin" type argument & is not particularly relavent to this thread anyway.

You know where that puts you.

Sure thats northing to compared to the mountains of shite we've created over the years.

We're ace.

I really don't get what makes humans so special that we're immune to the whole "Get rid of vermin" debate??? (fair enough it is not the point of this thread, but we ain't so great)

[Jim Stax]

If the Herring Gulls inherit the planet' date=' then good luck to them. The place will be a lot fucking cleaner, that's for sure![/quote']

Apart from the big pile of birdy poo that has my car under it!

hehehe

I agree with ye all the way though. We have created an inverted cliff for them to lodge on,in and around whilst feeding them at the same time. However... I have a colony of them living across from me on a large flat roof. What a fucking racket!!!! Cheesh, squaking muthers that they are. They are going particularly mad at them moment due to the younguns but I have been driven to slightly more than distraction at times. Got Keep the bleedin windows shut on the hotest of days simply because we can't here ourselves think.

I have reasoned though that they, the guls, are so loud, compared to our last residence, because they are not being drowned out by the excessive polluting traffic, rowdy littering school kids, barking dogs, drunks, running battles and mini riots, screaming and squaking hen nights and balshy testosterone driven stag nights. And that was just Fridays, in the city centre.

Damned if they aren't bonnie birds though.

[Guest Laura@TMB]

Seabirds occupy a strange position in the food chain' date=' in some circumstances they can be considered opportunists/scavengers whilst in others, particularly our inland/upland areas they can become a high in the food-chain predator & their relative invulnaribility/considerable adaptability compared to other species can easilly lead them to go out of control. Last year, I watched four gulls take-out an Osprey nest & its chicks, at other times I've seen them decimate the roosts of nesting Oystercatchers & Curlew - I don't doubt that plenty of other threatened native species, already sufering from other factors are being pushed to the limits by seabirds.

The sand-eel population recovered big-time some years back - ahead of & far in excess of all expations. Fish are like that, they breed prodidgiously & if the Exec ever get their act together, any limitations on fishing won't be as bad or for as ling as the fish-lobby would have us believe.

I agree, human wastefullness/stupidity is a big part of the problem

The most threatened seabirds are not the species we are talking about here - again they tend to be the more specialised feeders who stick to their more damaged traditional habitats.

Are you aware of the methods any official cull might include? For both disposing of the birds & to deter roosting? Few if any of them might be considered humane or distress free. At least the method I suggested does not take the bird out of its natural behaviour pattern & invariably ensures it is dead when it hits the ground. Better by far than say, being tranxed, picked-up with a neck-snare (which is a notoriously innefficent way of killing) then bagged-up with several hundred/thousand other birds then driven, maybe many miles to be chucked in an incinerator/CO2 chamber to suffocate, then landfilled. Or having their legs burned down to stumps due to the chemicals sprayed on the roost site - which of course can render it a hazzard to other species for a considerable time & possibly damage the place in all sorts of other ways. Never ming that the record of official culls tends to be poor - look at the pointless banjax that was the Western Isles Hedgehog cull or the complete & utter tokenisitc mess that the Red Deer Comission got into with its last cull.

Lastly, they are shitehawks & have been a malicious pest for years. Who really cares about them other than you? [/quote']

Some valid points there, and to answer your question re culls, I have no idea how our council would hope to control the population. Whatever option they adopted would undoubtedly cost some dosh and eat away at the councilors expenses budget . That, combined with the public acceptibility aspect of any proposed methods no doubt mean nothing will ever be done about them.

Its obvious what Im about to say next, but we can reduce their menace right now by reducing their food supply and limiting scope for their nesting sites, by netting or whatever. Other towns have put up signs at popular outdoor eating sites asking people not to feed the birds and warning them about their aggressive natures during breeding seasons. By culling, were kind of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted so to speak.

Ive actually witnessed a cull of pigeons taking place when working out of Belfast harbour early one Sunday morning in around 95. It wasnt pleasant. Two guys in a dingy with shot guns blasting the wee things out of the sky. Those that landed nearby my ship, most of which were only maimed, I asked some of my colleagues if theyd put them out of the misery to which they duly obliged. Broke my heart at the time, but with hindsight it was probably a lot more humane than using slow-action poisons etc.

Finally, and the reason I came onto this thread was concerning the cruelty aspect of some of the posts I read here.

Fact *1:- Laura@tmb hates children. On saying that I have, or will never, be knowingly be cruel to one (unless it attacked me while trying to steal my chips of course). If I had posted this fact here, and said that I was going to beat the little shite into a pulp then you can imagine the replies I would have received. Why is it therefore that intentions of animal cruelty are deemed by many as not only being acceptable but also amusing? Sad, sad, very sad indeed. Each to their own of course, but my own opinion is that if there are any malicious pests out there, then they are those who seem to have forgotten the difference between what is right and what is wrong. And they say we are the "superior" species

Fact *2 Laura@tmb was shat upon big time by one of her feathered friends on her way to work this morning. Ha ha classic... couldn't stop . And, they were supposed to be my friends *storms off in a huff*.

[dougfast]

Here's Mr Seagull...

The seagulls down there didn't really appear in the town at all - probably due to the fact there's still plenty of fish for them to eat in the shallows.

This was taken up at the top of the rock where the monkey colony is. I assume they nest up there.

yeah that cause they were fishing in our waters instead of theirs. please dont get me started on the fishing industry i have been affected by alot more than most and is a real sore point to me.

and when was the last time you seen boats trawling in shallow waters off the coast of britain??

[Mick Maverik]

Seagulls are cunts! I mind one snatched my Marks & Spencer chicken and sweetcorn sandwich right out of my hand just by the B.A. centre! Another time, a seagull swooped down and tried to grab my mate's burger as he was putting it in his mouth! The thing caught a bit of his lip and he had to fight it off carefully to avoid losing his bottom lip!

Andy

[Benji]

Then we came along and started catching ALL the fish. So the birds were forced (they did NOT have a say in the matter)' date=' to follow our boats and forage for scrap, mostly the heads, guts, tails, and any rotten bits that we wouldn't even put in fish fingers.

[/quote']

Sorry but that is plain BS.

The seagull has the option of Hunting for it's food, or scavaging for it's food!

It chooses the latter, making it a scavenger.

All animals are beautiful, the seagull is no exception, but they are scavaging little bastards, and deserve to die!!

[The Kernel Loaf]

There scavengers not bloody eagles.....gulls ahve never been preditor to any animal....They scavenge not hunt.....

....Err, they used to hunt fish before humans came, and when all the fish was gone from the sea, they had to adapt to a new environment in order to survive. It's called urbanisation.

Yes, they are a pain in the arse, but just because they do not have the advanced mentality of a human and will do whatever they can to fend and protect their young, it doesn't make it acceptable to kill them. They aren't intelligent enough to know that they are a nuisance on the human race, and if they were, I don't think they would give a shit. We wiped out their primary source of energy intake.

[Shaki]

When ze seagulls follow ze trrrawler, it's because zey sink sardines will be thrown in to ze sea. Zat is all.

[Alkaline]

We wiped out their primary source of energy intake.

Fucking hell!!! I don't know what i've been eating then, i thought it was fish??? Maybe not, maybe they've replaced all the fish in the sea with 'fish' and thats what we eat. Seagulls should just try harder they have a bit of an upper hand on the fishing malarky as they are actually phsically equiped to do it.

Survival of the fittest. Next time i get swooped the bastard gets hooked out of the air with my rucksack and gets jumped up and down on. I understand that they just protect their young, but for christs sake i don't want to go anywhere near their scabby flea infested young. Its not like i'm acting in an agressive manner towards their offspring, i go out of my way to avoid the stupid cunts yet i still get chased up the road being dive bombed the whole way. Hopefully while the idiot parents are chasing me their young are being rended to pieces by an opertunistic cat.

I've yet to be convinced of any way that seagulls are of a beneficial nature so i stand by all my points.

[Teabags]

This is probabaly all coinicidence but...

Im a vegetarian. I would never kill or harm a seagull. I dont eat fish which is their original food source. If I don't finish my chips or some NED cunt throws his pizza at me ina taxi rank, I'll throw it to the gulls.

I have NEVER been attacked by a seagull.

"It's called Karma. My name is Teabags."

[The Kernel Loaf]

Fucking hell!!! I don't know what i've been eating then' date=' i thought it was fish??? Maybe not, maybe they've replaced all the fish in the sea with 'fish' and thats what we eat. Seagulls should just try harder they have a bit of an upper hand on the fishing malarky as they are actually phsically equiped to do it.[/quote']

Not really. They do not have the knowledge that there is still fish to hunt, and they don't have the mentality to think it. They have adapted to become urbanised now, so it is going to take a major significant increase in fish in the North Sea for them all to even remotely consider reverting back to what they have physically evolved to do. If there is a food source in a city, why should they change back to their old ways and go to sea to find food when the amount of rubbish humans make is more than enough to satify the diet of a seagull? They wouldn't be a pest if we didn't make them pests in the first place.

I've yet to be convinced of any way that seagulls are of a beneficial nature so i stand by all my points.

Yes, seagulls are scavengers, but they also hunt. They keep dominant fish species in check by hunting them, and this ensures that one species of fish will not become the only species of fish in the North Sea. If there were no hunters to hunt this dominant species of fish, then the other fish species that are competing for the same resources as them will eventually die out and become extinct. The dominant species will have the higher population, and therefore will be hunted more because of their availability - not just hunted by seagulls, but also by other fish, seals, other seabirds and even us. Therefore, seagulls are of a beneficial nature to the sea, just not to human-populated environments.

Survival of the fittest.

We do not have the same requirements as seagulls, so that statement is void.

[Alkaline]

We do not have the same requirements as seagulls' date=' so that statement is void.[/quote']

Yes we do. We both have the desire to reproduce, obtain food and look after ourselves and our offspring. So the survival of the fittest statement stands. All species on earth are competing for the same if not similar resources, as a side seagulls were competing with me for my food resources on the way home last night. I won.

Plus i really don't see a seagull killing me given the body/strength issue so its a survival of the fittest scenario the rat with wings can't win.

And no, seagulls aren't beneficial to me.

[The Kernel Loaf]

And no' date=' seagulls aren't beneficial to me.[/quote']

Maybe not to you, but they are to an entire ecosystem.

[Alkaline]

Maybe not to you' date=' but they are to an entire ecosystem.[/quote']

I suppose being the dominant hunting species on earth we could control the seagull population by eating them, after all there are too many of them as they only seem to increase in numbers.

This is purely conjecture as obviously, being the ecologist that you are, you'll know that increasing seagull numbers is also bad for the ecosystem (before you yakk on about it i know humans are too) but at the end of the day less seagulls, less of a problem. They don't seem to be able to live in conjunction with us so something has to give, and as seagulls are slightly less important to human beings than their fellow humans i think they'll be on the losing side.

[jonty84]

At least the seagull is fending for itself' date=' unlike the parasites that live off the state, and there are far more of those in Aberdeen than there are seagulls.[/quote']

Yeah, all those seagulls loitering about in the dole queue smoking and reading the Daily Sport was really starting to piss me off.....

[Flash@TMB]

"Remember that the animals and plants have no Member of Parliament they can write to; they can't perform sit-down strikes...they have nobody to speak for them except us, the human beings who share the world with them, but do not own it." - Gerald Durrell, from Catch Me a Colobus

***

African Gray Parrots have intelligence equivalent to a 2 year old child. They can communicate with us in our own language and in context. They exhibit a broad spectrum of moods and emotions that are similar to our own.

Yet if someone fed this bird with baking soda until it's internals were ruptered by trapped gas, they'd receieve a punishment of what? A few hours community service! Yet take a 2 year old human child down to the local petrol station, chop the valve off the tyre inflators airline and stick it up their ass, causing a similar death and what do you expect the punishment for that would be? Aside from death by lynchmob.

If an alien family landed on earth in a spaceship, they would find themelsves in a smilar legal position to the parrot in that they would not be afforded the same protection as humans. So would it be OK(ish) to torture and kill them?

Where exactly is this line drawn? Is it drawn at Seagull? Why? Seagulls, like all birds, are relatively intelligent creatures. Should there even be a line? Why is it OK to cause pain and suffering to anything beneath this notional line. Why are creatures beneath this notional line considered to be devoid of all rights?

***

So there are 7,000 or however many gulls in Aberdeen, and thus their population need controlled. Well there are over 200,000 humans in Aberdeen, so of them breeding like there's no tomorrow. But by the same logic that's totally acceptable is it?

Humans and rats number among the most sucessful species on earth. Our total populations are not dissimilar. But (soon) the rat shall inherit the earth - just like it did 65 million years ago...

***

People speak about saving the planet from global warming. Well NEWSFLASH - global warming is the planets way of saving itself from us. and if you think it's not going to affect us too badly in our lifetimes, then you are delusional.

***

The words humane and inhumane are the most arse over tit fuck up definitions ever conceived.

***

Humans are the self proclaimed rulers of this planet. So is fucking everything else over how we would expect a good ruler to behave? If a bunch of aliens landed here with superior technology and treated us the way some of us would like to treat seagulls, would they be considered good rulers?

If we do indeed rule this planet, then that puts us in a position of great trust and we have a responsibility to look after it, and everything that lives on it. That includes gulls.

[soundian]

Yes' date=' seagulls are scavengers, but they also hunt. They keep dominant fish species in check by hunting them...[/quote']

Fish are a small part of a herring gulls diet (if at all), so how can they keep the dominant fish species in check.

[Teabags]

I suppose being the dominant hunting species on earth

We're not.

When was the last time you, or anybody for that matter, actually hunted your last meal??

In fact, whenw as the last time you even saw the animal whose meat you were eating?

[Shaki]

"

Humans are the self proclaimed rulers of this planet. So is fucking everything else over how we would expect a good ruler to behave? If a bunch of aliens landed here with superior technology and treated us the way some of us would like to treat seagulls' date=' would they be considered good rulers?

[/quote']

No, but Alkaline would be holding his hands up saying "fair enough, survival of the fittest and all, time for us to make way, where do you want to stick that pipe? Up the ass or down the gullet?"

[Benji]

Seagulls' date=' are relatively intelligent creatures.

[/quote']

Anything stupid enough to sit on a road deserves our wrath.

Most animals are intelligent, they are of intelligent design!

Were dodo's clever?

Are pandas clever?

Maybe.. but the point of Natural Selection and intelligent design is... the strongest survives.

[Teabags]

Are pandas clever?

Maybe.. but the point of Natural Selection and intelligent design is... the strongest survives.

Id love to see you go one-on-one with a Panda.

[jonty84]

Id love to see you go one-on-one with a Panda.

That's the stupidest thing I've read on this in a long time.

[Teabags]

That's the stupidest thing I've read on this in a long time.

How exactly.

Apparently Bux is more intelligent and will survive.

[jonty84]

The image of a human being fighting a panda is, all at once, absurd, ludicrous, unlikely and ridiculous.

Let's stop it right here before this argument descends any further.

[Benji]

How exactly.

Apparently Bux is more intelligent and will survive.

We humans have guns, we are stronger because we are smarter!! Panda's may be smart to other animals, but to us they're like you... thick as bamboo!