In Defense of Gulls

What These "Uninvited Guests" Can Teach Us About Ourselves and the Sea

It’s time to talk about gulls. Not as thieves. Not as pests. Not as cartoon punchlines. But as misunderstood ambassadors of the ocean. Because the way we treat gulls says a lot about the way we treat the sea itself.

Rats With Wings?

We call them “rats with wings.” Cities hire hawks to chase them away. This year, Cannes literally employed falcons to keep gulls off the red carpet. We joke, we sneer, we roll our eyes when they swoop too close to our picnic. But think about it: who else doesn’t get invited to fancy parties? People who remind us of the mess we made.

The truth is, gulls aren’t intruding on us. We’re intruding on them. We paved over their nesting grounds. We filled their beaches with garbage. We over-fished the waters they once relied on. And now we scold them for adapting to the buffet we left behind?

Clever, Resourceful, Relentlessly Adaptive

Spend a little time watching gulls, and you’ll see something different. They’re clever. They’re resourceful. They parent attentively and live cooperatively. They learn fast. Some have even figured out it’s easier to let humans unwrap food before swooping in. That’s not “pest behavior.” That’s pattern recognition. That’s a bird who’s been studying us.

And they’re not just survivors, they’re striking. Really look at one sometime. The clean white plumage set against storm-gray wings. Eyes as sharp as a sailor’s. A creature carved by wind, salt, and centuries of evolution.

A Mirror for our Ocean Relationship

In a way, gulls are the perfect metaphor for our relationship with the ocean. We want the romance but not the reality. The postcard view, not the wild complexity. The beauty, but not the bird poop.

When gulls follow fishing boats or circle piers, they remind us the ocean is alive, and watching. They are the ocean’s plus-ones, crashing our landlocked party with sea breeze still clinging to their feathers. They belong here as much as the tide, even if they don’t fit neatly into our curated version of coastal life.

Respect, Not Rejection

If we can’t love gulls—adaptable, elegant, survivalist gulls—what chance does the ocean have? They embody resilience in a world we’ve disrupted, and yet we dismiss them for being too loud, too messy, too present. But maybe that’s exactly why we need them.

So here’s to the gull: scrappy survivor, coastal sentinel, “uninvited” guest we desperately need. You don’t have to like them. But you should respect them.

Because in respecting gulls, we might relearn how to respect the ocean more itself.

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