Esther & Kobi after eating a bowl of blueberries.

Larus Occidentalis - Western Gull

We have so much snow, the gulls and other birds are desperately looking for food.
Pete has watched two Eagles attack and then fly away with gulls in their mouths.
Last Sunday morning after smoking some fish, gulls started to appear in our yard. There were a few, then many, and then at one time I counted almost 40 gulls.

Pete and Kobi started feeding them bread and quickly dwindled the supply. Pete remembered we had old herring in our freezer. The gulls are waiting for the herring to spawn this spring which seems to be delayed because of the cold weather. He decided to help them out and put the frozen block of herring on our sidewalk. The gulls pecked at it, pecked at each other, including their eyes, and eventually it thawed enough to eat. Unfortuatelly, they pulled the bits of herring into the road to fight over it and two got ran over by a speeding teenage girl. Kobi, Pete, the neighbor and his girlfriend watched in horror. The neighbor with his girlfriend tracked down a license plate number and description to report it to police and Fish & Wildlife. Ultimately they and we were told, Sea Gulls have no protection and just throw them in the trash. Ugh! So unfair!

In addition to the sad life of a gull.
Kobi and I saw a gull lazily electrocute himself by landing on a transformer
and then fall 25 feet to his death. After calling the Raptor Center, F & W, and the police, we were told to contact the City Electric Dept. to see if the wires were okay.
No one cared about the gull. We were crushed. Poor guy.

After having 40 gulls within inches of our feet we discovered they are really beautiful birds.