This is birdnought.

Goals are notorious for snatching French fries from waste bins and flocking to landfills.

But one Western gulls' devotion to trash reached a new level with an epic road trip.

Since 2013, researchers have been tracking Western gulls nesting on islands off San Francisco.

Their GPS data show that on average, forage in gulls will travel about 11 miles away from their colonies.

Then, in May 2018, a female gull took a trip like no other.

She started by flying inland to a Bay Area transfer station.

It's a waste facility where food scraps are loaded onto semis and hauled to a compost center in the Central Valley.

But the tracking data show that after leaving the transfer station, the goal followed the highway east for 80 miles to that Central Valley composting facility.

The only explanation? She was riding a transfer truck.

The goal may have gotten trapped in the truck unintentionally, but it delivered her to 216 acres of glorious garbage.

And shortly after returning to her colony, she repeated her trek.

It's the first time scientists have documented such an unusual commute.

But as human activity continues to alter Western gulls' natural habitat,

maybe this new approach to dining out will catch on.

For Bird Note, I'm Michael Stein.