This YouTube clip of a Maori truckdriver narrating his rescue of an angry seagull in his cab is probably the most New Zealand thing you will ever see. It’s a vicious thing, bro.
Pretty funny. I see that the guy seems to have a facial moko (but not very dark). How common is that these days?
I love the way he keeps right on saving her, even while she’s trying to have his eye out
Yeah, it’s been my experience that birds are assholes.
And yet, no matter how many times it tries to take a bite out of him, he goes right back to holding it within beak-distance of his face…
The birds survived while their cousins the dinosaurs died out - you gotta expect a certain level of savage toughness from that sort of critter.
As a keeper of birds, even the tame variety raised by humans can be extremely vicious and dangerous when injured, and yes, they do go for the eyes. You really need to keep them away from your face.
For whatever reason, this seems not to be normal with raptors. Their weapons are their talons, which can be very dangerous - but if you control these (which falconers take care to do) they hardly ever use their beaks. When you see the beak in action dismembering a rabbit, you realize how fortunate that is.
This is sometimes attributed to the fact that they depend on excellent vision for survival, and so can’t use a tactic that would risk their eyes.
Actually, it makes sense - for a lot of birds their beak is their best weapon, but for raptors it’s their feet. A frightened wild animal is going to lash out with their best weapon.
If he had put that cloth over the bird’s head it would have calmed down a lot. I have had the misfortune to get seagulls tangled in my fishing line a few times over the years, and putting a towel over the head keeps them calm enough to untangle and/or cut the line. That also did the job for the horror story that was my close encounter with a pelican. When I was a kid it worked on some pretty vicious roosters too.
I know that even relatively tame birds can be vicious.
Many years ago my mother bought a psychotic parrot that the previous owner had called Fang. My mom renamed her Fran, but nobody was fooled.
Fang and my mom got along fine but if anyone else got within range of that beak things got ugly.
Pretty rare, rare enough to make you look twice anyway.
Hilarious video though.
I’m disappointed, I had clicked on this thread hoping the seagull was swearing back at him and it was a two-way thing. (If they can talk like parrots)