On the ocean, seagulls often eat near whales, feasting off the small sea creatures the whales bring to the surface, but when there’s not much food at sea, they spend more time looking for food on land. The clever birds are famous for eating almost anything, whether they’ve been invited or not. Research has shown that seagulls will even take short rides on boats to save energy, but until recently there wasn’t much to suggest that they also catch rides on land. Then Dr. Scott Schaffer, a biologist who studies birds, decided to place a tracking device on a female seagull to see where she went. He expected the device to give him a good idea of where she went over a week’s time, but he didn’t expect what he found. In the beginning, things seemed normal, with the seagull making 6 short trips over the sea, with an average of 22 miles per trip. Then the trips got longer, with the seagull flying about 67 miles to get to a recycling center and back home again. What really surprised Dr. Schaffer was an 80-mile trip — but this one showed that the bird was traveling at a speed of 60mph. It was then that he discovered that the bird had actually hitched a ride on a garbage truck leaving the recycling center and wound up at a compost center near Modesto, Calif., some 80 miles away. The bird apparently spent the night at the compost center, then flew all the way back to her nest. The entire trip took over 20 hours. Dr. Shaffer and his team say they don’t have any reason to believe the seagull took the trips on purpose, but say it’s likely the bird made the trip twice in two days, and kept returning to the recycling center afterward. The scientists say it’s possible that the bird was beginning to learn that it was an easy way to reach a great source of free food.