Maybe they’re pooping on passersby more often — or possibly more people are reporting a theft of their lunch. No matter the inciting incident, some communities are convinced that more gulls have moved from the coasts and into their cities.
If these anecdotes are to be taken as fact, gulls, a group of 40 species that people tend to lump together and call seagulls, could be your newest neighbors (or commute partners). A flock now occupies the roof of a train station in Frankfurt, Germany, says Alejandro Sotillo, an ecologist at Ghent University in Belgium. But what we think are soaring gull numbers could be an illusion hiding how the raucous birds are faring over all.
