And does it annoy them?
The other day on a South Carolina beach, I watched two seagulls shove their beaks into what looked like a gigantic porkchop. It was probably not a porkchop, but some nautical body part burped up from the ocean at high tide. It was big and bony, this mystery meat. And it was covered in sand.
Watching the seagulls tear into it, I realized that they must encounter a large quantity of sand in their diet.
How do seagulls process sand? And how much do they eat? Does it generate the same frustration I feel when five grains of sand collect in the cap of my water bottle? Or, sickly, do they enjoy it?
Seagulls and their sand
No one seems to know how much sand a typical seagull ingests. And no one seems to care. But while I foraged for answers on the first page of Google, I did find some great fun-facts about seagulls - which I won’t restrain myself to share (as I might feel compelled to in other forms and avenues of writing, just as I might feel compelled pick either “avenue” or “form” for the sake of brevity, just as I might feel compelled to cut this long, apparently useless parenthetical aside).
Seagull Fun Facts
- Seagulls drink salt water.
- Lots of people (guys) on Reddit hate seagulls and write ridiculous manifestos against their federal protection as migratory birds.
- James Audubon is said to have disliked seagulls. One of the only bloody paintings he ever made of a bird was of a seagull with a broken, bloody wing.
- Seagulls are smart by our standards. They stomp on the sand, purportedly imitating the sound of rain, in order to lure lusting earthworms to the surface. They also work in teams to steal food from people.
- Seagulls congregate in parking lots because its easier to find food there than on the beach (and there’s no sand, in case it matters).
- They eat sand dollars — aka, sea biscuits, or sand cakes — who I didn’t know are actual animals, and who are “purple and hairy in their prime.”
- “Seagulls are fondly remembered in Utah for helping Mormon settlers deal with a plague of crickets,” in what is controversially commemorated as the “Miracle of the Gulls.”
- The California seagull is Utah’s state bird.
Moving on.
Trudging through the thick swamp of seagull fun facts, I still couldn’t find anything about sand. But I persisted. With the tact of any English grad student worth his syllabus, I broadened my web search beyond “Do seagulls eat sand?” to, “Do birds eat rocks?”.
And I uncovered a solid, unsurprising answer: Hell, Yes.
Gizzards, Gastroliths, and Avian Hairballs
Not only do seagulls get sand in their mouths, they seek it out and swallow it. Eating rocks — or in the case of seagulls, eating sand — facilitates digestion. Chickens, pigeons, penguins and magpies all eat rocks. Thayerbirding.com says that “Ostriches are said to be capable of swallowing stones of 4 inches or more.”
It is still unclear to me whether seagulls enjoy eating sand or not. Perhaps I’ll need to go back to the beach.
How it works. Stones of all sizes collect inside the seagull’s gizzard where they work like teeth, pummeling pieces of meat — or in the case of seagulls: a child’s corndog, pulled pork sandwiches, whale eyeballs, hip bones, funnel cakes, French fries, and five-inch sand crabs — into digestible bits.
These freelance stones are called gastroliths. Stomach teeth. A prehistoric alternative to dentures.
* A note on gizzards. Most birds have them. As did dinosaurs, who first started eating rocks to break down food. So do turtles, alligators, even earthworms. I had previously thought that gizzards were the testicle-looking flabs of skin located only on the necks of turkeys (and Mitch McConnel). This is not the case. The gizzard is not a neck flab, but a digestive organ. I’m thinking of a gobbler.
How much sand is too much sand in the gizzard of a seagull?
Seagulls have to be eating shit-loads of sand everyday. Which begs the question: How much sand is too much sand in the gizzard of a seagull?
Upon Googling “How much sand do seagulls need to eat?” I was immediately treated to a Reddit post revealing a kid catching a seagull by hiding in the sand. The video is horribly impossible to look away from. In classic Reddit fashion, the video is followed by a barrage of bad jokes, most of them oddly sexual, accompanied by vignettes of seagulls assaulting them or their loved ones, and capped off with a 20-some comment long argument about whether seagulls deserve death or sympathy.
Moved by the man-child’s grasp on the bird, [deleted] says that “I’m ok with this.” He (I assume everyone on Reddit is a guy) references a story where a seagull stole his fish and chips. “I hope they all died a painful death afterwards,” he says. Hrgilbert offers his sympathy with, “man, that really sucks.”
To make a short story even shorter, I could not find a quantitative answer as to how much sand is too much for a seagull’s gizzard even on the second page of Google. And I am still unwilling to sift through autopsies on wild seagulls to try and extrapolate one.
However. It is clear what happens when too much sand collects in a seagull’s gizzard. They puke it back out in hardened little balls.
Concluding, Romantic Remarks
Seagulls are wonderful. With crow-like brains and goose-like brawn, they eat whatever they want from whoever they want, wherever they want. Sure, they can bully other birds and overpopulate. And yes, they occasionally attack children. But I think that seagulls infuriate so many beach-going Redditors because they’re one of the few animals, like Canadian Geese, so clearly outside of moment-to-moment control. Rather than running away from human commotion, they’re drawn to it. They stare at you with those reptilian, yellow eyes of theirs, collectively asking, “Are you going to finish that?”
It shouldn’t surprise me that they eat sand. I bet the little urchins enjoy vomiting it back out too — even more than I enjoy watching one vomit on one woman’s kitchen counter.
