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A filed near our house was being ploughed at the weekend and it was full of seagulls. I've seen this often enough before, but it did make me wonder, where do the gulls come from and how do they know when the field is being ploughed? I know it seems like a silly question but i'd love to know the answer!

up until now i had often seen gulls swooping down and feasting of the newly ploughed soil,
however it had never crossed my mind how they knew, UNTIL NOW ;D
now its bugging me as well ....... thanks  ;D

This is interesting me too.  Right from when I was young I have always been intrigued so have been looking around, plenty of websites that say they follow the plough but none say why, apart from the fact they are scavengers.  They must just have brilliant eyesight and spot the plough from a long diatance.

First book I looked in was old Ladybird - What to Look for in Spring (1961) - how sad is that? :-[  I always remember the illustration in there.

http://www.bto.org/gbw/PDFs/FocusOn/Focus_BLHGU.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-headed_Gull

http://www.rspb.org.uk/advice/gardening/unwantedvisitors/gullsintowns/index.asp

T.

I was in the Southern ocean recently and at times 2 days from land... we'd have hundreds of sea birds follwing the boat... how do they know ????????!!!!! 

I have a field behind me and seagulls ignored it last year when it was oil seed rape, but now it has wheat or barley (I've not looked yet to see which) the field is popular with gulls... why?

I was watching arctic terns last summer on the Farne Islands and Antarctic terns in the Antarctic a few weeks ago.  Each are different species, but each migrate to the other end of the earth for "their winter" so the arctic terns were down in the antarctic a few weeks ago... what an amazing migration...

Birds are amazing...

I put some bits of left-over sausage rolls out about an hour ago.

We don't usually get magpies in our garden. There are at least 3 there now. And twice as many blackbirds as usual

Sally

O.K., here you go, Seagulls have a fantastic sense of smell, and pretty good eyesight too!! as soon as one sees anything worth an investigation, they call out!!
(somkeone please correct if this is wrong?) ;)

Last summer we were staying in a cottage in pembrokeshire near the coast. I put some food on the bird table for the birds and before I could leave got more than I bargained for...a very large gull practically landed on me immediately!

Quote from: tonybloke on January 23, 2009, 10:03:10
O.K., here you go, Seagulls have a fantastic sense of smell, and pretty good eyesight too!! as soon as one sees anything worth an investigation, they call out!!
(somkeone please correct if this is wrong?) ;)

Thats about what I'd say,  I'd not thought about birds having a sense of smell but they have very good sight and hearing. I'm told we shouldn't call them SEAgulls as they are coastal birds, not sea birds, you are more likely to see them inland than out at sea. Any Ornathologists on here to put me right?

It's amazing how quickly animals latch on to food sources. Normally you'd never see a single bee inside my shed, despite it's being just beside the hives. I once left some frames I'd just extracted in there, forgetting that they were still sticky. Within a short time, there were thousands of bees in there. Seagulls are just as sensitive.

When I was a child we had a farm in Canterbury foothills about 70 miles from the coast. We always had seagulls around and they also nested nearby. Some of their food source was dead farm animals though they weren't always dead when they started their lunch. Sick animals had their eyes taken first.

Gulls are no better than vultures, I agree.

I think they are fantastic birds, born survivors!! they'll eat anything, nest anywhere, and are fantastic at soaring and gliding, covering huge distances with very little effort, come on, let's hear it for the Gulls!! ;)