Unimpressed by gulls

[mtbc]

I am not much of a fan of birds. Small ones that tweet are not too bad but then there are the larger ones that are more like squawking, flying rats, having babies in inconvenient places that they then aggressively defend when they are not instead aggressively stealing our food or carelessly raining their fecal matter down on us and on statues of us and on all manner of other things. I doubt their general necessity. Foxes might like to eat chickens and hedgehogs eat eggs but overall birds do not at all endear me toward them. I am certainly fine with efforts to prevent their suffering but I care less that they exist at all: that any gulls in any jurisdiction are a protected species makes me wonder who might care to arrest any decline in their numbers.

People do care about gulls and that makes me curious. Perhaps birds are far more important than I realize, especially to people's happiness. Do some of the larger common birds actually look cute to some people? Are people simply more tolerant than I? At best I concede that in terms of vomit and feces around our property it is the neighborhood cats that are the largest culprits and I bet those cats are not even doing anything useful like depleting the local bird population. I suppose that I can see the attraction of bird feeder table apparatus that is designed to attract and support the smaller birds so long as they are well away from where I park my car or might choose to linger. I do seem to be missing some bird-liking capacity that many others have.

Comments

[emperor]

I used to like the black-headed gulls in Inverness, but mostly because their changing plumage provided a marking of the seasons, and because it was gently amusing to say "that's a black-headed gull. You can tell by the fact it doesn't have a black head" :)

[mtbc]

I'm glad I got somebody liking some gulls replying, thank you. I regret not making it up to Inverness until after you'd left! I do like markers of the seasons so your point resonates a little for me, it's just unfortunate that it's creatures like gulls and geese that bring such markers. (Also geese confuse me by flying north before the depths of winter and whatnot, perhaps they take a roundabout route!)

[damerell]

Last time I was in Whitby it was full of notices telling one not to feed the gulls, because then they become aggressive etc etc.

I have never fed a seagull (they are, after all, basically flying rats) but this didn't stop me being dropped on by one while I was eating a sausage roll. They're heavier than they look! (I retained the use of the sausage roll, though).

[mtbc]

They do get rather large - certainly glad you retained the prize!