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herring gull swallow live full grown rat? (1 Viewer)

S

scuba0095

Well-known member
HEllo

A friend of mine claims that just a couple of days ago while waiting at the ferry he spotted a large brown rat traveling among the rocks on the side of a lake. AND OUT Of no where a common ordinary herring gull swooped on it like a raptor bit it a few times then swallowed it down ALIVE like a snake!



IS IT common for a herring gull to take such huge prey? My friend claims this rat was very large! ALso do they often eat prey while its STILL ALIVE? :scribe: :egghead: :-O :-C :gn:
 
Great black-backed gulls will eat puffins that they catch on the wing, whole and alive, so I can't see any reason why a herring gull which is only a bit smaller cannot do the same to a rat.
 
London Birder said:
the way they can manouvare a live crab down their gullets leaves me unsurprised by this report
Click to expand...

Classic short note in an early Scottish Birds which had photographs of a Herring Gull which had swallowed a mole and the mole had then ripped its way halfway out of the stomach before they both died!

Also a note in British Birds I think on a Bonxie which eat some sort of eel I think, which then burst out of the bird.

There are dangers in eating live food!
 
any one remember the picture in the front of the birdwatching magazine with the gull swallowing a young rabbit,they wait by the burrows and wait for anything that will fit down their throats!,bins with wings.

matt
 
But still a brown rat is such a fiesty nasty animal! If you have seen one attacked you will see they put up damn good fights! I had a cat get his nose bitten pretty bad from a rat that he killed. YOu would think it would rip the bird up while he was swallowing it!
 
I seem to remember reading somewhere years ago (in British Birds?) of a couple of cases of gulls eating live rats, then the rats clawing their way out, killing the bird. Not recommended!
 
I saw a cormorant on Bosherston Pools which struggled with a 3ft eel for about 10 minutes before managing to swallow it whole and you could still see the eel wriggling in its neck. A short while later the same cormorant was seen doing the same thing again. The greedy little so-and-so. I know it's not a herring gull but it just reminded me of it.

Gus
 
scuba0095 said:
But still a brown rat is such a fiesty nasty animal! If you have seen one attacked you will see they put up damn good fights! I had a cat get his nose bitten pretty bad from a rat that he killed. YOu would think it would rip the bird up while he was swallowing it!
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Absolutely. I've seen Brown Rats fight a ferret out of a hole on several occasions, and terriers badly wounded on the nose by rat bites. I'm sure a Herring Gull is well capable of killing a rat, so why would it eat it alive?

saluki
 
Not far from where I grew up there is a big Common gull colony. In the meadows nearby in summer, I have seen Common gulls kill voles with the following method: flying low over the meadow, suddenly swooping down and crushing the scull with a well aimed peck with the beak, landing and swallowing the often still struggling vole whole. When hunting Common gulls were disturbed accidentally , I could go and have a look at the victims . these few voles I saw were badly injured (crushed sculls!) and died soon, but where sometimes still moving weakly for some time.

perhaps this was similar here?
 
saluki said:
Absolutely. I've seen Brown Rats fight a ferret out of a hole on several occasions, and terriers badly wounded on the nose by rat bites. I'm sure a Herring Gull is well capable of killing a rat, so why would it eat it alive?

saluki
Click to expand...

Like Saluki I have seen ferrets and dogs badly bitten by rats. I remember once seeing a large Border Collie which used to terrorize people passing the farm where it lived put to flight by a large brown rat.

Below is the location of a photo I placed in the gallery some time ago showing a Heron with a rat. I watched the Heron kill the rat and even dead the Heron appeared to struggle to pick up the rat and dropped it a few times before disappearing.

http://www.birdforum.net/pp_gallery/showphoto.php/photo/66870/sort/1/cat/500/page/3
 
I've hear those stories about a gull eating a rat, which clawed its way out again, killing the gull. I think it was an uncle who claimed to have seen it.

But rats can put up a fight. As a kid I chased one down and caught it by the tail, it swung up, bit my thumb and held on for a couple of seconds. Needless to say, the rat got away and I ended up at the doctors.
 
Squid

Good grief! How fascinating. I've nether thought of the consequences of a bird eating live prey. I just thought it would die very quickly from the digestive juices.

Sandra
:eek!:
 
urrghfrrr - I feel sick. Who saw Alien? :eek!: (sorry Keith, just noticed you've already mentioned this gastronomic nightmare)

:eat: Herring gulls have become eating machines and are very capable of adaptive behaviour such as stomping on grass to draw up worms, flying low to steal a sandwich from an unsuspecting diner, even seen one eating a dead blackbird which certainly didn't look like a cat-kill or road kill! They can open bin bags, undo boxes, get the lid off a dustbin :scribe: (though Ive yet to see one open a tin can) - they'll eat ANYTHING!! (including your eyes given half the chance - remember Hitchcock's 'The Birds'! :eek!: ) Not surprisingly, they could eat something that disagrees with them (something we're not allowed to do on BF of course :'D )
 
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