Beer, firearms, testosterone, and birds are a combination that is somehow always combustible.  So it was this past Saturday, when six drunken yahoos on a beach southwest of Seattle shot ten gulls and a crow.  They apparently lured the birds in with hot dogs.

Sharnelle Fee, director of the [wildlife] center, said two bullets found in the bird will be removed and given to authorities for ballistics tests.

“We have a lot of trouble with beaches where cars are allowed to drive on,” she said. Seagulls sometimes get run over, but the multiple killings are unusual. The fact that the birds were baited is particularly troubling, she said.

“It’s one thing to take a potshot, but to bait them and shoot them is pretty premeditated,” Fee said.

Written by Corey
Corey is a New Yorker who lived most of his life in upstate New York but has lived in Queens since 2008. He's only been birding since 2005 but has garnered a respectable life list by birding whenever he wasn't working as a union representative or spending time with his family. He lives in Forest Hills with Daisy and Desmond Shearwater. His bird photographs have appeared on the Today Show, in Birding, Living Bird Magazine, Bird Watcher's Digest, and many other fine publications. He is also the author of the American Birding Association Field Guide to the Birds of New York.