Spotted: An Unexpected Student on the USD Campus

Sure, the USD campus is pretty close to the ocean, so it would be understandable that you see a seagull here every now and then. However, this large bird made an appearance on our campus on Thursday night and was not afraid to be seen. This quite large seagull clearly had one thing in mind: food. Making it’s way all the way from the beach, this seagull has clearly been attracted by the overflowing trash cans, such as this one, on the USD campus.

As noted in the foraging and eating behavior blog post, seagulls can be very creative in how they obtain their food and they are not picky about how they get it. However, what caused this particular bird to risk coming all the way to the USD campus from the beach (about 5 miles) to scavenge for food? According the various foraging hypotheses discussed in class, it is clear USD must be a pretty consistent place to find a good amount of food for birds like this gull. Because it takes quite a bit of energy to travel this distance, the bird must be attracted by the security of knowing food will consistently be present.

One a separate note, what does this say about the USD campus? If a bird is willing to risk this much energy to search out food on our campus, trash must be consistently and readily available. Due to the fact foragers such as this seagull and others like raccoons are so prominent on our campus, maybe our school needs to cut down on trash or increase trash receptacles. Due to the fact a lot of the trash in this picture could be put in the nearly empty recycling bin right next to the trash bin, the answer might not be in increasing trash cans, but increasing knowledge on how to recycle! This will not only save a seagull from food it should not be eating, but it will also make our campus look a little nicer!

Picture credit: myself

Source 1: class lecture, Dr. Blaser Spring 2012

Source 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gull

Source 3: http://www.ehow.com/about_6618858_seagull_s-diet.html