Are Seagulls Native to the Bay Area?

Bay Curious

KQED

Places & Travel, History, Society & Culture

4.9 • 999 Ratings

🗓️ 14 August 2025

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Seagulls are everywhere in the Bay Area — flocking to Giant's games in San Francisco and crowding South Bay salt ponds. But are they actually native? Once seasonal visitors from Mono Lake, they've recently become year-round residents. We get to the bottom of this gull invasion. Additional Resources: Are California Gulls Native or Invasive to the Bay Area? Maybe Both Read the transcript for this episode Sign up for our newsletter Enter our Sierra Nevada Brewing Company monthly trivia contest Got a question you want answered? Ask! Your support makes KQED podcasts possible. You can show your love by going to https://kqed.org/donate/podcasts This story was reported by Pauline Bartolone. Bay Curious is made by Katrina Schwartz, Gabriela Glueck and Christopher Beale. Additional support from Olivia Allen-Price, Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Maha Sanad, Alana Walker, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on Team KQED.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From KQED.
0:03.9	Seagulls are everywhere we go in the Bay Area, swooping into Giants games at Oracle Park.
0:10.0	Hey, the seagulls are here.
0:12.4	Making it difficult for planes to take off at the San Jose airport.
0:16.0	We 1118 just hit a bird in a business, clearing an emergency, returning to San Jose.
0:20.7	And generally being a nuisance.
0:23.5	Ask almost anyone who has eaten anything outside,
0:26.9	and they'll have a seagull story.
0:32.6	One summer day, we were having a picnic,
0:35.4	and my dad was grilling,
0:37.2	and one seaggel just swooped
0:39.5	down and took an entire hamburger patty that was cooking on the grill.
0:44.8	Classic SF State lunchtime scenario, get an awesome student union burrito, go outside to eat
0:50.8	it, sit down, Siegel swoops in and takes a huge bite.
0:55.0	Absolutely disgusting burrito ruined.
0:58.0	One afternoon I was sitting in behind the ferry building and joined my lunch.
1:02.0	A couple of visitors to our city were walking around enjoying ice cream cones.
1:07.0	Out of nowhere, a seagull swooped down and took one of the scoops of ice cream atop one of their cones
1:14.6	and flew off with it.
1:16.6	And of course, there's the poop.
1:18.6	I was a first grade teacher at Audubon Elementary in Foster City.
1:22.6	It was right along the bay, so there were tons of seagulls.
	...

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