This Researcher Wants Your Photos of ‘Gulls Eating Stuff’

Ken Abrahams has taken thousands of photos of birds. An amateur photographer with limited mobility, he sits on the beach near his home in Bournemouth, England, and lets his subjects come to him. Among his regular visitors are gulls, which he often finds scarfing down practically anything they can find on the shore, from sea stars to cheese puffs.

Photography may be a hobby for Abrahams, but now his photos are contributing to avian research. Some of his favorite shots of gulls mid-gulp are among more than 300 images that have been submitted to a new community science project documenting the birds’ diverse diets and voracious appetites. Its name? Gulls Eating Stuff.

The project was launched in January by Alice Risely, an ecologist at the University of Salford in England, who is soliciting photos from around the world of gulls chowing down. Her goal is to better understand how urbanization and a changing global climate might be shifting gull diets and potentially affecting their populations, which are in widespread decline. Contributions so far include shots of gulls eating everything from moles, pigeons, and Rose-ringed Parakeets to apple crumble, fried chicken, and doughnuts.

Bird diets are notoriously difficult to study, Risely says, since it usually requires closely tracking individuals for a long time. But Risely regularly comes across amusing pictures of gulls devouring strange things in her own social media network. So, she decided to harness the public’s existing fascination to better understand gull diets. “The great thing about gulls is that they often hang out and eat where humans are, making them perfect for citizen science,” she says.

Indeed, gulls have learned that urban food, while often not as nutritious as their typical prey, requires less energy to obtain and is a lot more predictable than stuff in the wild, says ecologist Kim Lato, co-chair of the Pacific Seabird Group communication committee. “Trash pick-up happens the same day every week and recess for kids is the same time every day,” she says. “Fish, on the other hand, are constantly moving.” In California, scientists recently observed one Western Gull hitching two separate rides on a garbage truck from a waste station in San Francisco to a compost facility some 75 miles away. 

Populations of gull species across the United States and the United Kingdom have been declining for the last several decades primarily due to habitat loss, food shortages, and avian flu. In the U.K., populations of Herring Gulls have dropped by over 70 percent since 1969, earning the species a place high on the country’s Birds of Conservation Concern list. Similarly, American Herring Gull populations fell by 82 percent between 1966 and 2021. Western, Glaucous, and other gulls have also seen serious declines, according to the latest State of the Birds report published by science and conservation groups.

This concerning trend surprises some people, Risely says; gulls appear prolific along populated coastlines and aren’t shy about getting up in people’s business—especially when food is involved. As their natural menu of fish, crustaceans, and bivalves grows thin from overfishing and coastal development, gulls seem to be relying more on human food, she says, congregating where people like to dine and toss food waste.

These lurking gulls are sometimes bad for business. Royal Society of Biology communications director Susie Rabin began avoiding cafes with rooftop flocks after a gull dive-bombed her for a bag of french fries near a shop in Cornwall, England, 10 years ago. But the incident didn’t stop her from recently submitting photos to the project of gulls eating a slice of watermelon and a stick of butter.

To participate in Gulls Eating Stuff, contributors must make an account on citsci.org, upload a picture of a gull of any species eating something identifiable, and note the photo’s date and location. The one rule is that the photographed gull isn’t being deliberately fed. Risely plans to accept submissions through 2026.

Not everyone shares her enthusiasm. After launching Gulls Eating Stuff, Risely began receiving emails and messages on the project’s Instagram account from contributors expressing hatred for the birds; one participant called them “flying, screeching rats.” 

But data is data, Risely says, and she will gladly accept photos from gull lovers and haters alike. Most contributors are based in the U.S. and U.K., so Risely hopes to see more images from other countries as the project continues to get a better picture of how gulls’ diets are shifting globally and which species are most impacted by urbanization.

For now, Risely hopes the project will help people feel a little more tolerant of gulls and recognize them as dynamic and deserving members of urban coastal ecosystems. Abrahams, for one, says he has a soft spot for the birds. A few years ago he lost an ice cream cone to a gull that swooped at him from behind, but he doesn’t hold a grudge. “I can’t imagine ice cream is good for a gull,” he says. “But, you know, live and let live.”