A B.C. wildlife rescue centre is trying to help 18 baby seagulls after they jumped or fell from their rooftop nests during a recent heat wave.
Gulls nest on rooftops, which offer safety from ground predators like rats, minks and coyotes, but during heat waves, those homes can be dangerous or even deadly for baby gulls who haven’t yet learned to fly, the Wildlife Rescue Association of B.C. said.
“What that means is that sometimes they jump off prematurely and end up in the downtown corridor,” said Jackie McQuillan, manager of the charity’s support centre in Burnaby, B.C.
The centre, on Burnaby Lake’s south shore, helps care for wild animals in and around the Lower Mainland. About 18 young gulls are there now, following a spike in calls during prolonged high temperatures earlier this month.
“Rooftops become dangerously hot, so gull chicks will prematurely jump from their rooftop nest or can burn the bottoms of their feet,” said McQuillan.
The gulls, who learn to fully fly when they are about six weeks, are only around a few weeks old, McQuillan said. They will be nursed back to health and rehabilitated into the wild.
A Burnaby wildlife rescue centre is keeping busy with baby seagulls they saved, after high temperatures led the birds to flee their rooftop nests.
Edward Kroc, a quantitative ecologist at the University of B.C., said baby gulls can’t control their body temperatures before they’ve properly developed feathers.
“Depending on the type of roof that they’re nesting on, there might not be much shade,” he told CBC News. “There might not be anywhere to kind of just be protected from the elements in general.
“This is where we might see these younger gulls try to find some kind of refuge from the sun. And that often happens by jumping and trying to get somewhere else.”
Anyone who sees a young gull on the ground is asked to contact the wildlife rescue centre and provide a photo or video clip.
Gulls normally eat fish and insects and while people shouldn’t feed them, they can put things out to provide shade or water for them, McQuillan said.
“They are really susceptible to becoming habituated. Admire them from a distance,” McQuillan said.
Kroc said disturbing a seagull nest is against provincial and federal laws, and that Vancouverites should learn to coexist with the birds, which are native to the city. The birds can live up to the age of 30 or even 40 years, according to Kroc.
Drivers should watch out for brown and grey gulls, especially in August and September, as young gulls that have just left their nests often don’t know to avoid cars, he said.
“There’s a tendency for people to say: ‘Oh, they’re pests, they’re noisy or loud or dirty,'” he said, adding they’re no worse than people.
“They have a right to be here just as much as we do.”