Have you seen a lot of baby seagulls in downtown New Bedford lately? Here's why.

NEW BEDFORD — There may be mini plastic babies popping up all over the downtown restaurant scene, but there is another baby to look out for: seagulls.

"People just fly by here!" said Jennifer Smith, the superintendent of New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park. "It just felt like there were so many baby seagulls around and we need to look out for them."

Smith said during the summer, she will post reminders on social media to remind people to watch out for baby herring gulls. This year, she put a sign up on Williams Street that encourages people to drive slowly.

"I wonder if it had something to do with the pandemic and quarantine; where we started to see more wildlife pop up in the city because places were closed," Smith said.

The best way to identify a juvenile gull is by the color of its feathers. Almost all young gulls have a mixture of brown and gray feathers covering their bodies.

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Looking out from the third floor of the New Bedford National Park visitor center, baby gulls can be spotted on most surrounding rooftops. "There has been an eruption of them — there are tons everywhere," Smith said.

Smith tells a well-known story — that still makes the volunteers at the national park chuckle — of a visitor who mentioned that it was cool that they pipe in the seagull noises throughout the center.

"The tour guide was like, no, those are real seagulls," Smith said laughing.

Seagulls on New Bedford rooftops

Meanwhile, Smith isn't the only one noticing an increase in seagull population. Michael Novak, facilities manager at the New Bedford Whaling Museum said he avoids the roof from July to September as the gulls are hatching and learning to fly.

"We have about six nests on the roof with about two babies in each nest," Novak said.

Alexandra Copeland, the art curator at the New Bedford Free Public Library, said across the street at City Hall, construction workers had to reschedule maintenance on the roof because they were being dive-bombed by gulls protecting their nests.

Flocks of gulls on Boston streets last winter messed up the testing of self-driving cars, which identified the birds as a single, large roadblock for which they needed to wait indefinitely.

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According to Save Coast Wildlife, most people are not very sympathetic when it comes to seagulls.  A 2020 poll found that 95% of people hate seagulls calling them “rats of the sky” or “bags of crap with wings."

Staff members at the Buzzards Bay Coalition in New Bedford have observed gulls dropping quahog shells and breaking car windows in the city.

Gulls do have a purpose in nature

"I think it is common in seaside towns. I don't think this is unique to New Bedford," Smith said. "But we still have to live with them."

Herring gulls are actually helpful to the coastal ecosystem. According to AllAboutBirds.com, they consume bugs and keep the insect population in check. Seagulls are natural pest control for farmers and gardeners.

They are extremely adaptable and smart birds, and in most cases one of the few groups of birds whose populations are actually increasing today.

And they are protected under the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which makes it "unlawful at any time, by any means or in any manner, to pursue, hunt, take, capture, kill, attempt to take, capture, or kill."

"I think people think they're nuisances like that, and they aren't," Smith said. "They've become desensitized for sure. And that creates dangerous situations for them, and more importantly, their young offspring."

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Smith said last year her team created a fenced in area in the back of their building when two gulls created a nest bowl on the ground. "We have a great staff who go along with me. They are kind people and animal lovers," she said.

However, Smith said she has seen an uptick of gull chicks hit by cars. "Last year we found one under the bushes across the street," she said sadly.

"A colleague just saw two dead seagull babies on Elm Street. It's really sad to see that. We called animal control to have them taken away," Smith added.

Ways to decrease the gull population

In 2018, Chicago's South Loop made headlines when wildlife officials say some 70 baby seagulls were found dead on a sidewalk when they were attacked and, in most cases, pushed to their death by older birds in their colony and then run over by passing cars.

The number one reason that gulls stay near a certain area is because they are finding the most food and become dependent on that spot.

In Ocean City, New Jersey, gulls had become such a nuisance, in 2019 town officials spent around $65,000 to hire East Coast Falcons to use their birds of prey (four hawks, two falcons, and an owl) to keep its aggressive gull population at bay.

In Gloucester, musician Bradley Royds obtained federal permits to remove nests from the roof of his downtown studio, after five years of dealing with gulls ripping open trash bags, dive-bombing locals and screeching from their nests all day and night.

“This is an ecological and humanitarian effort to do the right thing for our town,” Royds said. “Otherwise they will move in and take over, and they have absolutely zero respect for humans."

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Save Coast Wildlife states the simplest way to stop gulls from being a problem in human society is to stop feeding them and make sure all open trash containers and garbage cans are properly secure.

Meanwhile, Smith had her own experience with a herring gull when one pooped on her hat. But she was quickly told it was good luck.

"I thought OK, but I still gotta clean my hat," Smith said. "But, see, they do have value, one of which is good luck."

Standard-Times staff writer Seth Chitwood can be reached at schitwood@s-t.com. Follow him on twitter: @ChitwoodReports. Support local journalism by purchasing a digital or print subscription to The Standard-Times today.

This article originally appeared on Standard-Times: Watch out for baby seagulls on the streets, as population grows