Because of the problem of too many posts, I did look in the archives but couldn’t find anything on this.
Why do seagulls (I think that’s what they are) hang around big parking lots in areas where there is no ocean or body of water? I thought seagulls just hung around the ocean. I’m curious to know what’s up with this. I feel sorry for them when I see this. I feel like they’re lost or confused !! I only see this once in a great while. 
Ok - there must be some reason for the birds to assemble. Food, shelter, comfort, etc. I vote for the comfort. Most parking lots are asphalt or some other dark, heat-absorbing material and are a few degrees warmer than the surrounding areas. My WAG is that they’re comforted by the heat. I’m also guessing that there may also be some behavioral imperatives that also come into play - something that relates to mating or bonding or something - and that might be facilitated by the dark backgrounds, the easy sight lines, etc. So, there you have it: a full paragraph designed to obfuscate the fact that I don’t know.
Seagulls are misnamed. I would call them “flying rats” because that’s what they are. Where there is garbage, you will see them. I have seen them in garbage dumps hundreds of miles from the sea.
Seagulls come in several varieties: herring gulls, ring-billed gulls, laughing gulls, Bonaparte gulls, etc. And different kinds have different eating habits. Herring gulls and ring-billed gulls are scavengers. Thanks to the intrusion of mankind, they feed on handouts and garbage from * homo sapiens *.
Herring gulls are sometimes called McDonald gulls, because you see them at McDonalds, which is not to exclude all the other fast food joints where the slobs ([/]homo sapiens*) let food particles fall to the ground. They are also fresh water gulls and can be found inland.
Ring-billed gulls are found near the seashore, but they are also scavengers. Aforesaid * homo sapeins * intentionally feed them there, especial the immatures of that species. They also are found in some inlands. Laughing gulls are also common at the seaside, but they are not scavengers.
The other gulls are active fishers and will not eat anything that is not alive, or freshly killed.
I think they mistake the expanse of asphalt as water. Which is why you never see them in fields or on the buildings.
There was in fact a thread on this quite a while back, but it was so long ago I’m not going to search for it.
Undoubtedly the primary reason gulls “loaf” in parking lots is for protection against predators. Lots allow them to have an unobstructed view both horizontally and overhead to detect falcons, foxes, dogs, or whatever.
Aside from parking lots, I have often seen gulls “hanging out” in the middle of freshwater ponds or tide pools shallow enough for them to stand up. This is undoubtedly for the same reason, with the additional benefit that ground predators will have more difficulty in approching.
A secondary reason they hang out in some parking lots, particularly McDonald’s, is because of food supply - dropped french fries, etc. However, they often can be seen standing in the middle of empty parking lots nowhere near a fast-food store or other food supply.
Additional heat from black asphalt could sometimes be a factor in winter; however, gulls also hang out in lots in the summer, as well as on white concrete lots that reflect heat.
One reason they certainly *don’t * hang out in lots is because they mistake them for water. Gulls are a heck of a lot smarter than that.
What I don’t undestand is why there are seagulls in the Wal-Mart parking lot in Springfield, IL. Get a map. You’ll see that the nearest ocean is about 700 miles away. Of course, Lake Michigan is only 200 miles away, but Lake Michigan gulls would still have to be pretty far off-course to make it this far south.
I have seen seagulls by the jillions in fields–following tractors during the planting season, feasting on the worms and insects stirred up by the tractor.
As to seagulls parking on buildings, their feet aren’t exactly built for perching and I doubt that their wingspan would permit them to land on building ledges anyway.
Well, Rasta, they’re just “gulls”, not “seagulls”. They’re omnivorous scavengers, specializing in garbage, and they can live anywhere there’s food and shelter from predators, all of which describe the Wal-Mart parking lot. Not many falcons hang out at Wal-Mart nowadays.
The kind we have Downstate is usually the Ring-Billed Gull.
http://www.illinoisraptorcenter.org/Field%20Guide/gullsandterns.html
Why are they in the parking lots? My first response would be, “Because that’s where the dumpsters are.”
Duh. :rolleyes:
“Seagull,” when applied to all gulls, is a bit of a misnomer. While many species of gulls live in coastal areas, many others live inland and nest on freshwater lakes, for example Franklin’s Gull of western North America. Incidentally, the state bird of land-locked Utah is the “seagull.” Gulls can be found right in the center of most continents, as far from the ocean as you can get. At least one species, the Gray Gull of South America, nests in deserts far from water and commutes to the coast.
IMHO seagulls just hang out wherever they can get food. Maybe the seagull telegraph passed on that there’s food for the grabbing in central IL and so they started showing up to see if it was true.
One place you can always count on to see seagulls is at one of the dumps inbetween Madison and Milwaukee- they must like the methane, because these are the covered-over landfills I’m talking about (with no open trash in sight), and they just hang around the vents.
I can’t believe that they hang out in public for protection against predators, though. Seagulls taste rotten. Literally. Does anything eat them?
How do you know what they taste like?
Lots of animals eat gulls, Peregrine Falcons and foxes among them.
As I mentioned before, gulls often can be seen hanging out in empty parking lots, open fields, or shallow ponds where there is no food. While they often gather at food sources such as garbage dumps and dumpsters, when they are not looking for food they tend to congregate in open areas anyway, in order to have a clear view of approaching predators.
As you undoubtedly learned somewhere, sometime that the gulls in Utah ate all the locusts and saved the Mormons from losing their crops. So, let’s not be gullible about the name. And don’t take a wrong tern.
A close friend who will eat anything draws the line at seagulls. He had one years ago and he still considers them the most disgusting of all creatures. This from a guy I’ve seen eat rotting fried onions from a plastic garbage bag and declare them “okay”.
I personally think of it as the seagull’s ultimate revenge.
Totally unrelated seagull/parking lot story:
I used to work in an office that was located on the shores of a river. The local gulls learned a nasty new trick. They would grab hold of clams, mussels, whatever mollusk they could find, then fly way up high over our parking lot, and drop them. The impact on the asphalt would break the bivalve open and provide access to the yummies inside.
Of course sometimes the critter landed on our car hoods, windshields, etc.
The boids also developed an appetite for windshield wipers, but that’s another story.