A taste of summer during a blast of winter

Penny Says: What would our beaches be like without seagulls?

Like them or not there are thousands of seagulls on Canadian beaches. These squabbling birds seem to spend all of their time befouling the sea, sand, docks, children and every possible surface you might try to eat on or sit upon. Most people tolerated them as pests much like rodent’s shooing them away and steering clear of their contaminated fecal matter. But when a seagull proudly displays a starfish as its catch of the day crowds of people will stand and watch in awe as this mighty hunter stuffs the ridged, calcified, five armed starfish into its narrow bird beak.

What is the trick the gull is using to get the starfish down its throat? Digestive juices! The gulls will put one arm of the star into the back of their throats and the digestive enzymes in the gut are brought up into contact with the starfish’s arm, theses acidic juices act to slowly but surely soften the hard exterior. Once soft the gull maneuvers the next arm to its throat to soften. The bad news for the starfish is that is not necessarily dead while all this digesting is taking place. Once all 5 arms are nice and limp the gull will fold the starfish in half exposing the centre of the star to its digestive juices!

Other than their clearly entertaining value it is not obvious what seagulls provide as far as helping to maintain balance in the ecosystem. After some digging I found a few reports that suggest the parasites are spread by the gulls act to control snail populations. http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Aug06/ShoalsResearch.kr.html this group is spending hard earned research dollars to determine how gulls impact snails among other things. Eating the things that eat vegetation helps protect against loss of vegetation. But Gulls go one step further, by limiting the reproductive capacity of the critters they were too full to eat protecting the vegetation in their habitat.

These territorial birds are opportunistic eaters that will eat anything they get their beaks on - but once they find a reliable food source in their territory and establish a way to get it down they eat it almost exclusively. Apparently once they become a starfish eater they are always a starfish eater. They will of course still be open to an easy meal of unfinished fries or even a ketchup package!

Spring is just around the corner!