All Hail the Herring Gull

What she worry about bird dogs and people? There's pizza to be had here.

When they aren't eating eider chicks, piping plover or tern chicks, or snatching baby murres off ledges, herring gulls inspire quite a bit of awe and respect in me. You have to admire a bird that is able to both ignore and exploit people to its advantage; a bird that will eat everything from lobster bait and hard-shelled clams to pizza--and figure out how to get each of those in the most expedient way.

It's just a bird, right? How smart can it be? Very smart. And maybe older than you. Herring gulls can live into their 30's and 40's.This herring gull spent a bit of time sizing up a couple who had brought pizza to eat at Beavertail Park in Rhode Island--one of the places Clay Taylor took the bird bloggers when we traveled to the Swarovski facility in Cranston, RI. Webbed feet don't stop herring gulls from perching on almost anything. It's hard to do that without a functional hind toe, but they manage.
She moved in closer, eyeing the food to be had.
A close pass revealed that sky-silver that gulls and terns wear to perfection.
Hello. You seem to have reached your satiety. Spare a bit of pizza for a hungry mother gull?
Yes, yes, all that. Just give me the pizza.
For your amusement, I shall catch your bits of crust in mid-air. Gulls have binocular vision straight down--useful when we are cruising the ocean blue for prey or flotsam.
Thank you, Pizza Sources. You have performed exactly to specifications. I'll be off now.