| Title | Are Oregon gulls trash birds? [blog post] |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2016 |
| Authors | Loredo, Stephanie |
| Corporate Authors | Oregon State University. Marine Mammal Institute. Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna(GEMM) Laboratory,, |
| Secondary Title | Recent Posts [blog] |
| Call Number | Digital Open Access |
| Keywords | Yachats (Or.), Western gull = Larus occidentalis, feeding behavior, nutrition, human impacts, geographic distribution, temporal distribution |
| Notes | Western gulls are among the commonest and most easily identified Oregon seabirds. Popular perceptions of these birds are often formed by encounters with them at dumps or parks, where they are seen to fight over human trash and food. Is this observed behavior the norm? In 2015, Oregon State University’s Seabird Oceanography Laboratory along with the Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna (GEMM) Laboratory studied the behavior of Western gulls based at the “Cleft-in-the-Rock” colony at Yachats. This blog post describes the behavior of ten tagged birds over a two week period. In fact, the gulls foraged in marine and intertidal areas, instead of within the city limits of Yachats. The author hypothesizes that the small population of Yachats, the village’s relative cleanliness and the colony’s proximity to Marine Protected Areas account for the lack of dependence on anthropogenic food sources. Further study on a larger scale was done in 2016 in southern Oregon. |
| URL | https://daac.ornl.gov/cgi-bin/dataset_lister.pl?p=28 |
| Series Title | Recent Posts [blog] |
