The Birds (2018)

I’ve said before that red-billed gulls and black-backed gulls have this weird, uneasy relationship. The way a single black-backed gull will hang around the smaller gulls as though they’re its minions is creepy and controlling, verging on predatory. Well a couple of days ago, I saw a SciShow video called “Killer Gulls Rip Into Whales and Murder Seal Pups” that casts black-backed gulls in a new and dark(er) light. The black-backed gull is called the kelp gull in other parts of the world, and in Namibia and Argentina, kelp gulls have learned to prey on seals (Namibia) and southern right whales (Argentina). Just let that sink in for a moment: large mammals are falling prey to gulls that we think are annoying because they try to steal our chips. The problem is so intense in Argentina that whales have changed the way they surface so they can avoid gulls landing on their backs and tearing out chunks of flesh. Whale calves are more vulnerable to the gulls, because they haven’t yet learned the gull-avoiding behaviour. Those gulls perched on the streetlights of Motueka: they’re killers with ice running through their veins.