Seagulls hunting small birds?

At national level most of our common songbird species have been stable - i.e. not much change except short term declines after harsh winters etc. Two exceptions are Goldfinch (increasing a lot) and Greenfinch (decreasing). With regard House Sparrows I suspect it's a local habitat issue at play as they don't move far - so possible they lost a nest site near you,not maybe just had a poor breeding season (numbers way down at my parents house this winter).

Nothing at all to do with gulls though. Most of those birds move too fast and are too agile for a gull to even bother going after them, and gulls aren't nest predators of songbirds either. If you saw one take a Starling, it was just being opportunistic rather than it being common behaviour/prey for them.

magicbastarder wrote: »

a chap i know used to work beside stephens green and was chatting to the park rangers in there a few years back, asked was the seeming falloff in ducklings due to the pike he'd seen in the pond. the rangers said no, they reckoned it was seagull predation.

Herons and Gulls are definitely the main predators of ducklings in urban ponds alright. Unfortunately those urban ponds represent very poor habitat to try and raise ducklings compared to a natural habitat, which most people don't realise. Some people do raise it as a reason there should be a gull cull (usually people with faux concern for ducklings when actually they dont like the noise of the gulls...), but if ducklings are the main concern then they can easily be raised in captivity and released when they're old enough to look after themselves!