Gulls feeding young on white mass

leon_heller · #1 (**permalink**) 21-07-2010, 02:42 PM

I've got a family of Herring Gulls on the balcony outside my bedroom window. On a couple of occasions one of the parents has brought a sort of white mass for the chicks to eat, it looks a bit like crumpled white cardboard. I've seen the chicks pecking at it, and when I look out later it's disappeared, so they have presumably eaten it. I've never seen anything like it, does anyone know what it is?

tom00_uk · #2 (**permalink**) 21-07-2010, 04:02 PM

could it be the polystyrene food packaging from chips etc

leon_heller · #3 (**permalink**) 21-07-2010, 08:17 PM

It's nothing like that. Apart from what I feed them, my gulls only bring back sea food for the chicks (fish, crabs and so on); they are very superior birds, not the sort that go round eating discarded burgers and chips.

The next time I'll photograph it, and break a piece off to examine under magnification. I might even taste it.

animartco · #4 (**permalink**) 27-07-2010, 09:30 PM

Couldn't it be bread? The remains of a soggy old loaf? Hospitals and bakeries chuck out their old bread for gulls, which even the most discerning birds consider gorme eating

leon_heller · #5 (**permalink**) 28-07-2010, 04:22 AM

It's definitely not bread. As I said, it looks like crumpled white cardboard.

animartco · #6 (**permalink**) 29-07-2010, 10:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by leon_heller

It's definitely not bread. As I said, it looks like crumpled white cardboard.

Well then it probably IS crumpled white cardboard. Perhaps some fish were wrapped in it and it smells fishy. Sounds as if your gulls are having problems finding proper food.

Geoff F · #7 (**permalink**) 29-07-2010, 07:16 PM

Possibly that thick white paper which surrounds fish and chips. They don't taste the same without newspaper!

Alternatively, cardboard fish box packets. The gulls around my fish quay will rip a thick cardboard box to pieces within minutes. They are very intelligent and resourceful birds.

But going back to gulls and polystyrene etc. Does anybody else remember those polystyrene boats which kept getting totally destroyed by gull pecking.

For most of my life, I was a commercial fisherman and at one time we tried polystyrene floats for marker buoys, and net floats, but they were also pecked to bits.

Until I took early retirement recently, I had a blackback which would sit on the foredeck a couple of feet from where I was working and take scraps of fish from my hand.