Morro Creek Mouth, Morro Bay, CA

Many beachgoers toss their scraps to gulls. This feeding behavior teaches gulls to lurk near humans for a free handout, and even emboldens them to get aggressive. Feeding birds is doing them more harm than good. Hand-outs are much easier to get than their natural food sources. Gulls end up forgoing fish and insects in order to live on an unhealthy human diet.

Gulls are highly resourceful, very mobile, and extremely adaptable. They can live a healthier life without french fries, crackers, or bread.

Birds are a lot more interesting to watch when they are feeding on their natural prey, not on the discarded remnants of someone's lunch.

Gull Health
Feeding gulls may be fun and appear beneficial for the birds, but this food threatens their well-being. Foods like breads, crackers and french fries are commonly offered to gulls.

There are several negative outcomes from this feeding behavior. Because it’s easier for gulls to eat a free hand- out, they don’t eat as much of their natural food choices. A diet of bread and fries does not have the same nutritional value as natural foods, which may impact the long-term survival of the birds.

Additionally, when birds become accustomed to eating human food, they also become vulnerable to ingesting garbage, fish hooks, and other items they mistake for food that can injure and even kill them.

Disease
Causing gulls to gather in large numbers is bad for the birds themselves. Crowding together promotes the spread of infectious diseases like avian pox.

Safety for Humans
Feeding the birds causes them to lose their fear of humans, making them aggressive and even dangerous. How many times has your lunch been dive-bombed at your favorite outdoor restaurant by a gull who added insult to injury by depositing the remains of its last meal on your head? This behavior is not the bird's fault; it is the result of human behavior that encourages birds to seek out humans as food sources.

Gulls have been seen stealing bags of chips out of beachgoers' hands and even dive-bombing a little kid's ice cream cone, reducing the child to tears and the treat to a runny glob in the sand.

Fear of humans is healthy for birds. When birds lose their natural fear, their brazen behavior can put them in harm's way of cars, boats, dogs, and humans who consider them a nuisance.

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Longstreet Spring, Ash Meadows NWR, Nye County, NV

www.fws.gov/nwrs/threecolumn.aspx?id=2147540624

The spring pool is sometimes called the boiling spring because fine white sand bellows up from the depths gives it a 'boiling' appearance.

Longstreet Spring once contained a springsnail that only occurred at this spring. The Longstreet Springsnail (Pyrgulopsis spp.) is now extinct due to modification of its habitat associated with the enlargement of the spring pool and altered outflow stream channel. Increasing the size of the spring pool causes the water to cool more quickly. Reducing the size of the spring pool will help maintain higher water temperature further down the outflow, which is beneficial to our remaining native aquatic species (pupfish, snails, beetles, and other aquatic invertebrates).

Unfortunately, increasing the size of the spring pool also created a very shallow shelf, producing very dense cattail growth and providing optimal habitat for several invasive species. Introduced predators, such as bullfrogs and crayfish, now prey on endangered Ash Meadows Amargosa pupfish and Ash Meadows speckled dace throughout the system. Prior to eradication efforts at Longstreet Spring in 2011, the shallow water also provided breeding habitat for non-native fish. Limiting shallow areas will prevent cattail encroachment and reduce invasive species populations, giving opportunity for our special native fishes to flourish.

To reduce the size of the Longstreet Spring pool, a habitat restoration crew will place large pieces of caliche (“ka-lee'-chee,” white rock you see all around the boardwalk, cabin, and springhead) around the shallow shelf and fill spaces in between with cobbles, gravel, and sand. An angled drop to the spring orifice will help prevent cattail growth and return the spring to its natural shape.

Springhead restoration has only been conducted on one other system .Kings Spring was also reduced in size after it had been enlarged for agriculture, so stop by to see a successful example of how this technique works. Annual native fish surveys reveal that the pupfish in Kings Spring are now doing very well, and non-native species diminished.

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Cobble Creek Cabin, 371 E. Hooper Ave, Soda Springs, Idaho

Snow flurry

Taken on September 19, 2017 (uploaded 2/10/18)

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California Thrasher, off Los Osos Valley Road, Los Osos, CA

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Bullock’s Oriole, female, Riser Lake, Rendezvous Unit WDFW, Winthrop, WA

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