Great black-backed gulls: Hitchcock's villain remains a formidable predator on the big screen and on our coastlines
'The Birds' vilified this species of bird on the big screen. They remain instinctively wary and you can almost never get close to one — with good reason, writes Mark Cocker.
Director Alfred Hitchcock instinctively grasped the nation’s attitude towards our most unloved avian families when he made crows and gulls his two killers-in-chief in his horror classic The Birds. Our stock image of the marauding seagull might be less traumatic, but it’s still a rather heartless act — the carefree child on the promenade, relishing their ice cream until a grey-winged raider swoops down to snatch it.
Ironically, the one gull rarely guilty of that crime is, in some ways, the least loved of all: the great black-backed gull. It’s a formidable and — if its critics will permit — even magnificent seabird. Dark slate above and surf-white below, it is larger in size than all our raptors, except the two eagles. The chest is deep and muscular, whereas the huge bill has a heavy hooked tip. Yet sheer size renders great black-backs too ungainly for most ice-cream-stealing manoeuvres.
On many sea cliffs, the gull is a major predator.
More important still is the fact that the species suffered centuries of persecution and, in the Victorian period, this was so intense that it drove the bird to the edge of extinction. Slow recovery ensued, however that long history of human antagonism has left great black-backed gulls instinctively wary. You can almost never get close to one.
Even when we willingly feed birds at the seaside, this species seldom joins the squabbling throng. Offal from trawlers and the rich pickings at rubbish dumps are among its stock feeding opportunities; nonetheless, the gull is less dependent upon human foods and retains a strong preference for coastal places. On many sea cliffs, it can be a major predator.
My most visceral experience of this came once on a Scottish beach. Rabbits were scampering to feed across the lawn-like turf by the shore, when suddenly there was a commotion of black-and-white wings. The gull then proceeded to manoeuvre a near full-grown rabbit into position and, with several convulsive gulps, shovel the entire animal down its maw.
Elsewhere, young auks and shearwaters can become key sources of food for the gulls’ own chicks. On the Welsh island of Skokholm, off the Pembrokeshire coast, a mere 20 adult great black-backs were recorded as having taken 1,400 shearwaters in a single season.
Our breeding total of this species of bird is only 15,000 pairs.
We often colour these scenarios with a simplistic moral overlay — predator bad, victim good — even if this misunderstands the wider processes underpinning these environments. Birds such as shearwaters and puffins can be remarkably long lived and, if every chick survived to join the adult breeding population, their overall numbers would increase exponentially.
Great black-backs are natural constituents in many coastal settings. Yet there are places where there is no tolerance for this predatory behaviour. On the same island where I watched my bird catching rabbits, I was told by local crofters how the gulls were dangerous for their sheep. Not only did they accuse them of taking lambs, but also of blinding and killing full-grown ewes.
The issues are further entangled because the species has suffered a prolonged UK decline. Our breeding total is only 15,000 pairs, although this country is a destination for wider European populations in winter, when numbers swell to 77,000. Even so, the bird lives in a world of multiple jeopardy: at risk from collisions with offshore wind turbines, from various kinds of pollution, including seaborne plastics, from diseases such as avian flu and from entanglement in trawler nets.
Little loved, gulls none-the-less play an important part in the food chain.
I will close with a final anecdote that, if it incites no love for the world’s largest gull, might evoke grudging respect. I was once on a Scottish shoreline where a sperm whale had been washed up the previous winter. The carcass had lain there for months and, although it had broken into two enormous bone-girded reefs, it had lost none of its bulk. There was no sense of decay except for a strong smell in the air. The body yielded nothing to my full weight nor the impress of my boot.
Days later, I chanced upon the whale and there were two great black-backed gulls, patiently working the flesh, shifting their angles of approach, pausing occasionally to swallow fids of stone-like tissue. I finally realised: not only what a bird this is, but, also, what an extraordinary digestive tract.
This feature first appeared in the May 27, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.
