I haven't managed to get out of the house yet this week but arriving home today after work I noticed a few birds including 2 Lesser black-backed Gulls taking interest in what looked to be road kill, just a couple doors up from my house. Looking closer at the kill and it appeared to be a Brown Rat. While all this was going on, our local street cat was chasing everything that moved.. (a sight that I've had to get used to on my street as it is always chasing something..) All this made me think as very recently in the papers and the news, Gulls have had some really bad press. I don't think for one minute however that Gulls deserve this bad press and I'll tell you why. Gulls remain very good cleaners on our streets! They eat left over food that we drop, the filter through rubbish so that nothing is wasted and they also clean up dead or injured animals off our streets. In this case, the Rat was clearly killed by either the Cat, or by a car. I have also watched something simular at Llandegfedd Reservoir when an injured Blackbird with a broken neck tried flying out over the water. It infotunetly landed in the water and would have died a slow, painful death, if it wasn't for a huge Greater Black-backed Gull that caught the bird, killed it and swallowed it whole. Though this might sound crule to some people, it is a vital part of the system which keeps everything in balance. The weak will die off so that the strong healthy birds survive and pass on there genes. Natural Selection in action.
Lesser Black-backed Gull eating Rat