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Western Gulls. Photo: RJ
Roush
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‘Much that is good and all that is evil has gathered itself
up into the Western Gull.
…cruel of beak and
bottomless of maw…this gull asks only two question of any other living thing:
First, “Am I hungry?” (Ans. “Yes”) Second, “Can I get away with it?” (Ans.
“I’ll try).’
So wrote naturalist William Leon Dawson in The Birds of California in 1923, and a
brilliant demonstration of that bottomless maw is found in the SEFI Gull JuJu
Archive. The Archive, cherished
for posterity in a tin box in our data room, is a random collection of strange
and interesting objects brought to Southeast Farallon Island by gulls.
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| The Archive. Photos: Scarlett Hutchin |
The gulls don’t often carry things around in their bills for
long, preferring to swallow them first and ask questions later, so it’s
reasonable to assume that everything in the Gull Juju Archive has probably been
swallowed and regurgitated by a gull at least once. Things like a six inch plastic toy hammer, a baby doll leg, a
rubber tortoise, a golf ball, a set of vampire teeth, a collection of large fish
hooks and four jelly beans still sealed in a bag inside a plastic Easter
egg.
There are fragments of driver’s licences and credit cards, a key, a few
toy cars, a pacifier, Lego blocks, marbles, a balloon that reads ‘happy f***ing
birthday’, a drinks stirrer from a restaurant in Newport Beach and another from
Denver.
And if none of these were impressive enough evidence of the
awesome power of the gull’s gullet, SEFI biologist Pete Warzybok tells me that
not only has he seen a Westen Gull catch and swallow a flying Rufus
Hummingbird, he has also seen one regurgitate a tennis ball.
Yes, seriously, a tennis ball.
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| Western Gull. Photo: Scarlett Hutchin |
