California Seagull Hitched a Ride on Garbage Truck Twice — Then The Experts Found Out Why

If you spot a seagull wailing at the shore, don’t go too close - it may steal your food or even peck you. When starving or feeling threatened, an adult seagull will even become aggressive. In stark contrast, seagulls are lazy and therefore highly cunning. While foraging for food, they would often skip traveling all by themselves and instead steal from other birds or even humans. In a paper published in the journal Waterbirds, biologist Scott Shaffer documented the flight of a California seagull who hitched a ride from a garbage truck.

Shaffer came across this western gull for the first time while she was protecting her nest eggs on the Farallon Islands, a chain of small, rocky outcroppings and sea stacks in the Pacific Ocean, west of San Francisco. He was conducting research on the breeding colonies of seabirds, their diet patterns, habitats, and foraging techniques. To investigate the behavior of this gull, he captured her in a pillowcase and attached a GPS tracker device to her tail, a device no larger than a matchbox. He also used a Sharpie to mark a dot on her forehead, so he could recognize her the next time he came to see her.

Shaffer, a San Jose State University biologist, returned a week later to collect the data from the device. He was stunned to realize that the bird had been traveling 60 miles per hour, astonishingly faster than the typical flying speed of the species, around 20 miles per hour. In the paper, he mapped and documented the complete details and itinerary of her journey.

It was May 21, 2018, when the gull left the Farallon Islands and flew towards San Francisco, where she visited a garbage and recycling transfer station owned by the company Recology, near Candlestick Point. The next part of her journey involved traveling across the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, cruising along Interstate 880, and venturing down Highway 580. Her final destination was a composting facility near Modesto, where she also spent the night. The next day, once again, she departed for the Farallon Islands.

Two days later, on May 23, 2018, she returned to the composting facility. But this time, she took a different route to travel back, the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge. The two trips took her around 14 to 18 hours longer than the other journeys. While the entire journey was unsurprising in itself, Shaffer noticed something that made him scratch his head in suspicion and mystery. Somewhere on the way, the gull seemed to have gotten a lift from someone or something, likely a human vehicle.

Analysis revealed that she had hitched a ride from a garbage truck, not intentionally, though. Shaffer revealed that the gull had gotten trapped in the mesh-like tarp sitting atop Recology’s 18-wheel garbage truck to prevent food spills. The gull had become lured by these tasty food scraps and swooped down into the truck, getting entangled in the mesh. While the unsuspecting driver may be planning to drive the truck, the gull may have been secretly feasting on the treats. The treat didn’t turn out to be too festive, though.

This is the first time a seagull was observed embarking on such an adventure. “I have not seen that behavior in any other species that I’ve studied,” Shaffer told SFGate. Although this is not the first time a gull has been observed foraging both in water and on land, this particular “hitching the ride” behavior is what spurred the curiosity of researchers, prompting them to delve deeper into the science of seagull behaviors. “Gulls may be a nuisance if you’re having a picnic on the beach, but they can tell us a lot about the health of our environment right offshore from San Francisco,” said Shaffer.

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