When the Giants play at AT&T park this World Series (!!!!), everyone will be watching, including our feathered friends from McCovey Cove, who reliably descend on the stands during the 8th inning of ballgames.
The “mystery” of the seagulls has long been the subject of speculation. How do the birds know when to arrive? Is it the sound of “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” and the movement of the 7th inning stretch that sends them swooping in to pick up garlic fries? Or is it the glint of the lights that attracts them? Are they somehow keeping score? And could the gulls, who have been a distraction in the past (at one point there was a push to get a Falcon at games to fend them off) now serve as an advantage against the Royals? At this point, our Giants are so used to the flying spectators that we could play with them in the dugout: the Royals, not so much.
Many experts have been queried, but one local wildlife savant — Jon Mooallem, author of Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America— had notably been left out of the conversation. To remedy that, we spoke with Mooallem about his take on the strange phenomenon, which he finds reassuringly normal.
Mooallem has been closely observing the gulls at AT&T Park for many years. When we spoke, he was reminded of a recent trip to the Pacific Northwest: “We were on a ferry we’ve been riding for about 14 years. You used to see seagulls that would fly behind the ferry, and occasionally they would land and pick things up off the deck, but this time I was on the back of the ferry with my daughter, and there’s a woman there, and she’s got popcorn, and she just holds it up in her hands, and a whole bunch of seagulls would pluck it right out of her hands.”
Mooallem’s anecdote is about habituation: “It must have taken her some time to build up a rapport, and the more people do, the more the seagulls get comfortable. It’s the same with AT&T Park: the more times the seagulls are at the park, the more comfortable they are.” In fact, Mooallem has predicted the gulls might arrive earlier in the future.
Also at play is a good deal of group-think. Mooallem has another example here: “When you see seabirds above a whale, it will attract sea birds, but are they attracted the water track, or the other gulls?”
It’s about carrying capacity, too – “how much available food and shelter and whatever else is needed there is. With all those thousands of fans, it could probably support a much larger population of birds.” Mooallem speculates that some of the gulls who attend Giants games could have been born as a result of the 8th inning feeding practice: “This is the classic case for pigeons: the less work they have to do to eat, the easier it is for them to breed.”
A keen analogist of human and animal behavior, Mooallem also wonders why I’ve asked him about any of this, or why anyone treats the “mystery of the gulls” as a mystery at all.
“Why does it seem so strange to us? In a way it’s the most un-strange thing in the world. There’s a glut of food: It’s a giant place. The only thing that’s weird about it is that we think it’s weird to see birds in a baseball stadium.” In fact, he likens the gulls to San Francisco’s brunching crowd: a line for food always attracts a longer line for food. And hey, we’re all Giants fans, after all.
[Image via Getty Images]
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