By Sentinel Staff
Three seagulls were found dead near Back Beach Thursday, possibly from poison, an avian expert told the Sentinel today.
“We don’t really know if they were poisoned... We really can’t be certain that it was rat poison, but it’s highly suspicious that it probably was,” Alaska Raptor Center avian director Jen Cedarleaf said.
The dead gulls were reported to the police department just after noon Thursday.
Two of the birds were already dead when found, and the third didn’t survive long, Cedarleaf added.
“It was very strange to find three birds,” she said. “They were all in this very tight circle. Two of them were already dead and one was almost dead.”
The exact cause of death is likely to remain uncertain, she noted.
“Even rat poison, it wouldn’t kill them that quickly. We’re not really sure what it was – I suspect it was some sort of poison, but we’ll probably never know,” she said.
One of the animals was a healthy, mature Thayer’s gull, while the other two were immature Glaucous-winged gulls. X-ray images determined that the birds had not been shot, Cedarleaf said. A person who lives nearby told her that some neighbors had been using rat poison.
Alaska Wildlife Trooper Kyle Ferguson, called by police to investigate, said it “looks like they accidentally were poisoned, ate some rat poison that people in the neighborhood had put out. It looks like a purely accidental, non-intentional event.”
Back Beach is in the 1300 block of Sawmill Creek Road.
