Gull love

Herring Gull

“You’re gonna choke, you soft sod!”  A tobacco-wizened woman in a purple Sainsbury’s uniform is speaking in a West Midlands accent, partly to me, mainly to a bird and a little to anyone who’ll listen.  A juvenile herring gull trots forward to inspect something resting on the grubby pavement by a litter bin.  It proves to be an advent calendar chocolate, which rattles briefly in the bird’s beak before dropping down its throat.

“Oh well – one less to worry about…”  She means one less gull rather than one less festive litter item on the streets of Exeter.  She gives a rasping laugh and grins at me toothlessly, wreathed in smoke.  We are involved in a knowing moment: the idea of ‘seagull’ as nuisance is received wisdom.  It will choke on its misguided dietary choice.  How we will laugh. 

Her pronouncement surely unites us in a shared distaste for these winged vermin.  In two short utterances, so much.  Sentimentality crossed with an affectionate harshness, the British habit of talking to animals, a relationship with a familiar facet of nature that she believes to be universal, resentment towards our competitors.  Serves the damn thing right.  Things have got out of hand and everyone knows it.

Across Britain, herring gulls are at the centre of a bitter irony.  They are protected by law, and have been placed on the ‘red list’ of Birds of Conservation Concern due to an alarming decline in their breeding population.  Yet they are coming into contact with people more and more as they adapt to the opportunities provided by our disposable society.  Herring gulls are stealing more ice creams, scavenging more fish and chips than ever before, and by god, we hate them for it.

Everyone’s got a ‘seagull’ story.  An ex-colleague of mine once grabbed a herring gull that had swooped down to pinch his pizza in Plymouth.  It pecked another colleague on the arm; she ended up with ringworm.  My daughter had her finger hurt by a gull that swiped her pasty in flight.  And so on.

Along with foxes and feral pigeons, herring gulls occupy one third of a red, white and blue-grey triumvirate of familiar and resented wildlife, sharing our habitats, our habits, even our food, and starkly dividing opinion.  Yet foxes have hunt saboteurs and their genuine admirers, and even town pigeons are fed deliberately, often by lonely people glad of their company.  Not everyone shares the ‘rats with wings’ position, egging on the small boys who perennially seem to be chasing them.

But where are the gull-lovers?  Who’s sticking up for them when their necks are being wrung on YouTube, as a fisherman from Northumberland is alleged to have done?  Is it only specialist birders with a penchant for rubbish tips who really care about these birds?  If we do lose them, will they be missed?

I’m a lifelong lover of birds, but I must admit, even I struggle with the larger gulls.  It’s not that I bear them any animosity, it’s just that they don’t especially appeal to me, although I do admire their cunning, power and adaptability and their prowess in flight.  There’s something in that cold pale eye that rebuffs affection and warmth.  Here I, like so many, am missing the point.

‘They’re not nice’ – people will say, but niceness or nastiness is not the issue.  Perhaps one of the reasons that herring gulls are so unloved is that they confront us with the bare facts of nature.  They are highly evolved flying, scavenging, breeding machines, with not an ounce of humility or compunction.  That singular lack of conscience is ubiquitous in nature, but we often choose to dupe ourselves on this fundamental fact. 

With gulls we can’t.  That sleek yet hefty form in white and grey conceals a shark-like void.  In their opportunism they remind us of ourselves, but we can’t love them for it, or paint them in a stereotypical likeness.  Unlike the clever fox, the cheeky squirrel, the analytical crow, we look for something anthropomorphic to admire and find it lacking.

“It’s after your flaming pasty!”  An elderly man clad in a red tartan jacket waves his walking stick in my direction.  A lady in maroon on a mobility scooter grins and chuckles as she glides past.  The sullied puddle, its bed riddled with cigarette filters, reflects a clear segment of bitter blue sky.  A cellophane wrapper sails back and forth across the surface.

At my feet, an adult herring gull observes me meekly, its small, greyish eye alternating between hot food and cold sky, which it tilts its head to examine every few seconds for competition or threat.  Its head, neck and nape are smeared with muddy brownish streaks.  The soft grey tips of its secondary feathers curl up slightly with each rasping gust of wind that dashes at us around the sunless corners of buildings.  The white spots on its black primary feathers are as soft as snow.

A piece of pasty falls onto my shoe and bounces, steaming slightly, towards the gull.  It takes a few furtive steps forward on silent pink feet, before retreating at the loud approach of a street-sweeping machine.  It opens and closes its bill rapidly as though rehearsing the business of eating.  Finishing my snatched lunch, I step into the stream of shoppers, balling up and binning the greasy bag.  I look back as the gull pats forward in final triumph to bolt its morsel before being shooed away.

I have decided to be an advocate for the herring gull where I can.  To point out that it’s ridiculous to blame them for stealing food that we have brought into their habitat, where they’ve been far longer than us.  That we should hold their adaptability and ability to survive in higher regard.  That they are as worthy of conservation efforts as other, more appealing species.  That we should even try to love them.  I will have my work cut out.  I need to start with myself.