Coastal city cleaning service

European herring gulls

What does a European herring gull sound like?

Communication between these birds is complex and highly developed — employing both calls and body language. Two identical vocalizations can have very different (sometimes opposite) meanings, depending on the position of the head, body, wings, and tail relative to each other and the ground.

When a gull feels threatened on the ground, they try to make themselves appear bigger.

The European herring gull also has a yelping alarm call and a low, barking anxiety call. The best-known call produced by European herring gulls — which is shared with their American relative — is the raucous territorial ‘long call’, used to signal boundaries to other birds; it is performed by the gull initially with its head bowed, then raised as the call continues.

Are European herring gulls nice?

They are a predator as one large bird can be, but they are better scavengers and hunters. Even if naturally present on coasts, they often find their way into the cities, where they act as one of the cleaning birds. They control the rat population not by killing them, but by eating the food before rats could get to it. They eat wasted food of all kinds. It’s not even that it’s the only thing available for them — they do prefer rotten fruits over fresh ones.

They were found to kill city pigeons, although they do focus on securing the trashcans rather than eating the cities’ most known birds.

Are European herring gulls nice to themselves?

It wouldn’t be an article from me without judging European herring gulls as parents. They don’t seem so violent as water rails, the only thing I could possibly accuse them of is requiring independence from their young a bit too early. Some of those young travel with flocks of other gulls, before they finally find a group of their own kind.

European herring gulls maintain their distance from other members from their flock that aren’t close family, but if a chick is attacked, multiple adults will defend it, no matter if related to the attacked or not.

They fight for food with one another, but they are capable of working together, especially when trying to obtain something in a riskier environment. If there is plenty of food, the European herring gull will call in other members of the flock, so they are capable of sharing when there is something to share.

Humans, decide

There are a lot of disputes in the taxonomy of European herring gulls, especially between them and lesser black-backed gulls. Additionally, between different languages, you’ll hear different descriptions of which gull is which.

For example in Polish laughing gull refers to black-headed gull, Polish black-headed gull is English Mediterranean gull, and in Polish, the Mediterranean gull is Audouin’s gull in English.

Just clean up the references humans, it’s messy! If gulls can clean up the cities, you could do some cleanup for them as well.

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