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.
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.
Who thinks it might be fun to go have a couple beers and then start taking shots at these bozos? It sounds like a good time to me.
I can’t help but agree with Dan.
Agree Dan! Reminds me of that scene in Crocodile Dundee when some drunks were taking potshots at kangaroos and Mick gets behind a dead one with his rifle as if the kangaroo was taking shots at them! Loved that scene. Anyway, I find cars on beaches really repulsive to begin with. That just seems to invite trouble, not to mention the cars spoiling the scenery. You go to the beach to get away from things. Hope they catch the bad guys and at least fine them a ton!
…so sad. 🙁
I guess this could happen any place where guns, alcohol, and idiots are allowed to mix so freely – but it does re-enforce an overseas image of America and Americans that isn’t largely deserved. That’s almost as sad as killing the birds in the first place.
Charlie,
Sadly, from the guns, alcohol and idiots mix, I think it’s only the alcohol and not the other two that set these few Americans apart from much of the rest of the world.