Video: banding Ring-billed Gulls at Forest Lake, Palmer, Massachusetts

I really don't like this socks(or whatever) on gulls' heads.. What would they do if the bird escapes them? And I don't think the gulls can bite that hard and they are not any calmer in this way...

What do you other think?

Laud wrote:I really don't like this socks(or whatever) on gulls' heads.. What would they do if the bird escapes them? And I don't think the gulls can bite that hard and they are not any calmer in this way...

What do you other think?

Covering up a bird's eyes is supposed to render it almost completely docile. I'm not entirely sure why - but it seems to work.

Phil wrote:
Covering up a bird's eyes is supposed to render it almost completely docile. I'm not entirely sure why - but it seems to work.

I think that the key phrase here is "supposed to" because these gulls are not docile at all.. I know it usually works with other birds... Much better thing in cases like this is to cover them with blanket or something like that while extracting from the net (like Frank Majoor does).. I've started doing so and the gulls are much calmer.. This is very good for bigger catches.

[quote="Laud"]

Phil wrote:
I think that the key phrase here is "supposed to" because these gulls are not docile at all.. I know it usually works with other birds... Much better thing in cases like this is to cover them with blanket or something like that while extracting from the net (like Frank Majoor does).. I've started doing so and the gulls are much calmer.. This is very good for bigger catches.

Well, they're more docile than they would be if their eyes were uncovered.