The young birds are a problem for drivers because they can’t fly, so they wander through traffic
Crowds of lost gulls are making a fuss in a mall parking lot that is hundreds of kilometers from the ocean.
Dozens of the young birds, which can’t fly yet, are walking around outside Parkwood Place in downtown Prince George, B.C., while the adult birds squawk and fly above.
Aside from the noise and the poop, there have been accidents between shoppers driving their cars and the birds as they wander into traffic. This has caused a local wildlife rescue to be overrun with birds that need help.
“I’ve had broken wings, broken legs, dehydration, and starvation,” said Dayna Slater of the Good Caws Crow Rescue Society, which is taking in the injured animals.
WATCH | Gulls take over a mall parking lot:
Slater said that in the last week, up to 40 birds have been brought to her.
“Some are dead on arrival.”
The ‘McDonald’s gull
Jack Bowling, a long-time birder and member of the Prince George Naturalists, said the birds were ring-billed gulls, which look like the ones you see on the coast but are more likely to be found inland.
He said that they normally nest on sand or gravel bars in lakes and rivers, but that they also like the flat roofs and food at malls like Parkwood, which is how they got the name “McDonald’s gulls.”
Bowling said that gull colonies have been seen in Prince George for about 20 years, but that they have only recently started to nest in the middle of the city.
He said, “We thought they’d been there for a few years, but we’ve never seen proof that they’ve been breeding.”
“But this year, it looks like they were successful.”
A social specie
Bowling said that gulls nest in safe places like the mall roof, and that in the spring, the young ones start to learn how to walk on their own.
About five weeks after they hatch, they have enough feathers to launch themselves into the air and glide to the ground. However, they can’t go far or get higher, so they have to walk around until they can fly, which usually takes a week or two.
Bowling said that the adults take care of the young ones until they are old enough to take care of themselves. He praised them for being smart and friendly.
“Just leave them alone,” he told people who were wondering what to do about the birds.
“They’ll be able to fly pretty soon, and people won’t have to worry about them.”
Protected bird
It’s possible that not everyone is listening. Several people in the area have said that they saw drivers purposely drive into the gulls, and there have been worries that maintenance crews are taking the birds off the roof, but no proof has been shown.
In a statement to CBC News, the mall’s management company said it has no plans to move or remove the birds because “they have a place in the natural ecosystem” and the company wants to respect that.
Even if they wanted to move them, they would have to do something special. Canada’s Migratory Birds Convention Act says that all gulls must be protected. This was proven in a B.C. provincial court in 2019 when a Vancouver man who destroyed a gull’s nest on an apartment building by claiming he didn’t know it was illegal and that he didn’t know the law.
A spokesperson for British Columbia’s Ministry of the Environment couldn’t say for sure if conservation officers in Prince George had received any reports of cruelty to gulls, but they did say that anyone who wants to get rid of them would have to get a special permit from the Canadian Wildlife Service.
A humane solutio
Last year, when gulls started nesting on the roof of an arena in Quesnel, about 100 kilometers south of Prince George, causing similar problems, birder Steve Smith made sure his city knew this.
After helping get some of the baby birds that had jumped off the roof to a local rescue, he talked to city staff about how they needed to find a humane way to move the birds if they didn’t want the problem to happen again.
The solution they came up with was a device that plays a recording of a gull in trouble to discourage them from nesting. This year, it worked to send the birds to an abandoned mall in another part of the city.
Smith, like Bowling, is excited about the birds that many people see as a nuisance. He points out that the only reason they are in cities is because people have changed the landscape and left trash there.
He said, “We make the mess, right?”
“They clean up after us.”