Each summer, the same scene plays out across Athens: a fluffy young seagull, not quite ready to fly, padding along a sidewalk or calling out from the courtyard of an apartment block while its anxious parents wheel overhead. In recent weeks, reports of these wayward birds have spiked across Attica, prompting the wildlife protection group ANIMA to step in with some advice.
According to ANIMA, a Greek wild animal rescue and rehabilitation organization, this is a seasonal phenomenon that recurs every summer. Young gulls leave their nests prematurely as they begin to explore and get used to their surroundings. The result is a familiar early-summer sight: chicks on the pavement, parents circling the rooftops above, perhaps wondering, as ANIMA put it, why their impatient youngster left home too soon.
In recent years, gulls have established colonies not only in Athens but in other large Greek cities, including Thessaloniki, Chalkida and Volos. ANIMA says the same scenes unfold every June and July, from neighborhoods across Piraeus to Nea Smyrni, Kallithea, Moschato and Faliro, as well as in central Athens around Patision and Solonos streets and the Sepolia district.
The group’s main message is reassuring: a stray chick is usually not an emergency. When a bird shows no visible wounds or fractures, it does not necessarily need to be picked up. Instead, ANIMA recommends that people who can safely do so move the bird to a rooftop or a nearby spot by the sea, where its parents can find it. A large towel helps, the group notes, and you may need two to gently corner the chick. If the gull is older and you are close to the water, leaving it on the beach is fine.
If a bird does appear injured or in need of care, ANIMA asks that people place it in a cardboard box and bring it to the organization’s facilities, which are open seven days a week for exactly this purpose.
One thing the group cannot do is collect animals from where they are found. Citing limited resources and staff, ANIMA says it does everything except pickups, and asks the public for understanding when it cannot dispatch someone to retrieve every wandering chick.
So if you spot a baby gull looking lost on an Athens street this summer, chances are it is doing precisely what young gulls do. A little patience, and perhaps a well-placed towel, is usually all that’s needed.
Source: Ta Nea
