Before this thread, I didn't think it would eat squirrel, either.
Apparently I was wrong and you were right!
"It's to be expected from seagulls that they are going to eat whatever is available. And if it happens to be some weakling animal, then they will kill it and they will eat it."
Gulls may be best known for stealing people's fries at the beach, or tearing open garbage bins in search of a discarded sandwich — but Rock says they are the ultimate omnivores.
"Food, of course, is the key for everything and they know how to get it," he said. "For these birds, they know everything about everything within their home range. So if one food source dries up, they know exactly where to go for something else."
John Anderson, a professor of ecology and natural history at the College of the Atlantic in Maine, has been studying gulls for decades. He says while they can and do hunt, he's rarely seen one killing a small mammal. He suspects the squirrel was already dead when the gull found it.
But he cautioned against painting gulls with a single brush. Even gulls that nest right next to each other can have completely different routines, personalities and food preferences, he said.
"I can spend, you know, a whole day sitting in my lighthouse watching the birds. And it's like being in the middle of a wonderful soap opera, because each pair has its own personality," he said.
"Some are aggressive and some are really passive. And some of them are really exploratory. And some nests are incredibly beautifully decorated, and others are just little depressions in the ground. So it's the variety that I find really fascinating."
Swallowing a whole squirrel may appear unpleasant, but big snacks don't go down hard for gulls, says Rock.
That's because gulls — just like owls — have gizzards that allow them to swallow big prey and filter out the not-so-good-to-eat parts, which they then expel in the form of pellets.
And unlike when people gorge a bit too fervently, the gulls don't face any unpleasant digestive consequences.
"They've got cast iron stomachs," Rock said.
) and punched his way out
