Saturday 6 December 2008

Dancing Gull.





I like sea gulls which is unusual for someone living in a sea side town. When I first moved to Torquay I was driving down New Rd into Brixham and a seagull flew into the front nearside windscreen. I was doing 30 mph at the time so you don't need to spend too much time guessing exactly what happened to the poor little thing. I looked in the interior mirror to see what the reaction of my passengers was. In fact there was only one passenger, a dear sweet little old lady who looked as if she was on her way home from a vicarage tea party and for a moment I was concerned that she might be upset, blood and feathers being spread over the window as it were. She quickly dispelled that silly notion, "Oh good. An other of the buggers dead." I was more shocked by her reaction than the death of the bird.


OK. they are noisy and where I live we used to put our rubbish out in black bin bags which the gulls made short work of in their never ending search for something, anything to stick in their bellies. By the time the bin men arrived the next morning the road looked like a land fill site with everything from used nappies to empty beer cans spread from one end of the road to the other. One councillor even suggested pouring bleach over the bags to deter the gulls when we put them out at night for collection the next morning. He isn't a councillor now I might add. In the end we all got seagull proof bin bags and the problem went somewhere else.


Anyway I do take the odd photo of the odd gull I see from time to time but this 30 second video is not something I have seen a gull do before and for all I know does come in the 'odd' category.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

he is hunting for worms trying to convince them its raining and its going to flood their tunnels!

Anonymous said...

i had my own old person shock back in the care job days. after a lengthy discussion about her needs and how this was to be arranged she suddenly confided in me that everything bad in our society was down to "the blacks". i do it continually but really should stop judging books by their covers.

Steve said...

That reminds me of a scene from Flashdance. You're anonymous poster is right the bird is trying to yet food to come to the surface. I've seen them doing it in shallow water before. I wondered what the splashing was the first time I heard it.

Dave said...

Maybe its listening to an ipod and dancing to the music? :) Though I think Steve's answer is more likely. - Dave

David said...

It's so unusual to see gulls in Torquay actually looking for food the way nature intended them to. Normally they just attack chip eating tourists.