Bold Birds Barge In on Beach Buffets

There’s a crime wave at the beaches, and it seems to be getting worse as the late summer heats up.

People who leave their food-laden belongings unattended may find a gang rifling through their stuff. Other times, the thieves snatch their prey right out of victims’ hands.

The criminals are sea gulls, and park rangers say they always get more daring as summer progresses. It’s like a never-ending clip from Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds.”

“There’s no doubt about it, they’re brazen,” said Dan Watson, a ranger at Crescent Beach State Park in Maine.

Another ranger’s friend saw her lunch swooped away at Crescent Beach. “The sea gull landed on her friend’s head, then proceeded to grab the sandwich,” Watson said.

A dozen squawking gulls accosted a toddler at Crescent Beach, knocked over drinks, scattered french fries and swiped a cheeseburger from the picnic table where the young boy was sitting.

On the West Coast, gulls have taken french fries, hot dogs and hamburgers out of people’s hands at Golden Gate National Recreation Area in San Francisco, said spokesman Rich Weideman.

And at Pebble Beach golf course overlooking the Pacific, head golf pro Chuck Dunbar said the gulls congregate near the 10th hole because of the nearby refreshment stand. Once, he said, a gull snatched a watch from a golfer’s cart, then dropped it in the water upon discovering it was inedible.

“They know that food is wrapped in Saran Wrap. They know if it’s shiny, it may be something to eat,” he said.

Common culprits in Maine are herring gulls and great black-backed gulls, which some locals refer to as “rats with wings,” though no postcard-perfect harbor scene would be complete without them. Great black-backed gulls can have wingspans of more than 5 feet.

Some beach-goers toss scraps of food at the gulls, but that contributes to the scavengers’ aggressiveness by teaching them to associate people with food, said Bruce Connery, a biologist at Acadia National Park on Mount Desert Island.

Down the road from Crescent Beach, the Two Lights Lobster Shack has signs warning people not to feed the gulls. Unfortunately, the gulls sometimes feed themselves, said owner Martha Porch.

“We’ve had sea gulls take a whole lobster from a plate, and one day we had a sea gull take a wig off a woman’s head. One of my employees chased the sea gull down and it finally dropped the wig,” Porch said.

In Rye, N.H., a gull dubbed “The General” has been hanging out on the roof of the concession stand at Wallis Sands State Beach for three or four years. He puffs out his chest and squawks at other gulls that approach his territory.

One afternoon, The General swiped eight hot dogs from customers.

“I can’t even consume eight hot dogs,” marveled park manager Ken Loughlin.

The General likes to swoop down from the roof and brush customers’ shoulders with his wings before grabbing the dogs.

“Then he lets out this funny kind of yelp, like a Tarzan noise,” Loughlin said.

For a person, taking someone’s lunch could constitute theft or robbery. But sea gulls are protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918.

As a last resort, property owners can petition the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for permission to eliminate a nest. Owners first must demonstrate they’ve done everything else possible to shoo the birds away.

Judy Walker, staff naturalist for the Maine Audubon Society, suggests that people focus on the positive.

“They’re very elegant. If they weren’t so common, we’d appreciate them more,” Walker said.