Although it is a poor reflection on my character, I’ve admitted this before: I just do not trust them. I never met one I liked and I won’t be convinced to give them another chance. I just do not like geese. Gulls, yes. Ducks, of course. Terns and herons, who doesn’t? But those Canada Geese? Never.
So that’s my secret — and you probably hate me for my prejudice — but everyone has some bird they don’t like. Many people do not like gulls. In fact, I know a lot of people who simply dismiss gulls as noisy and unruly nuisances.
While there are 52 species of birds in the gull family, only three kinds are regulars hanging out around Seneca Lake: Ring-billed Gulls (adults grow to be crow-size and have yellow legs), the slightly larger Herring Gulls (pink legs), and the big bruisers on the block, Great Black-backed Gulls with a 5-foot-plus wing-span. (“Speaking of Nature,” Finger Lakes Times, Feb. 23, 2020).
Have you ever watched a colony (the proper name for a group) of gulls in the parking lot of Walmart during a rainstorm? The normally cacophonous and seemingly disorganized birds will turn on cue as the wind changes. They pick up their feet, one at a time in order, and turn in unison with the precision of a marching band. It is both comical and amazing.
Watching gulls at lakeside, there seems to be no method to their madness. In fact, just madness. Some swooping, some dropping kamikaze-style in an awkward spin, others in graceful motion moving with purpose. So unlike geese, that fly in bomber formations, or ducks, flying as tight squadrons speeding across the lake just inches above the water. Gulls screech, yeow, and scream without a hint of systemic rhythm. But that is just because we can’t see the patterns.
In fact, “Niko” Tinbergen was awarded the Nobel Prize for studying gulls and other animals, a pioneer in animal behavior research. He found that gulls’ “unruly flocks actually consist of choreographed postures and finely graded vocalizations that impose order, communicating everything from the presence of food or predators to anger, submission, hunger, cooperation, and pair-bonding.” (CornellLab, “All About Birds,” July 6, 2016).
It turns out, according to the same article, that while gulls will eat each other’s eggs and destroy a neighbor’s nest, when threatened they will move swiftly in a concerted attack. Apparently, researchers who study particular colonies will become recognized by the birds and upon approach, get dive-bombed with poop, vomit, and pecking. A whack on the back of the head by a gull is equivalent to being hit with a 4-pound dumbbell.
Chaotic swarms of gulls emit a variety of sounds that are actually calibrated differently by different species and different birds within species, and regarded by the other birds accordingly. So, a big Black-backed Gull may remain unconcerned when it hears the smaller Ring-billed Gull freaking out about a perceived threat. It all just sounds like screams and screeches to us.
It is much the same with human beings. With little understanding of differences in culture, we judge the language, music, and rituals of others as loud and chaotic screams and screeching. As with gulls, we dismiss the unfamiliar expressions of different cultures as just so much noise and unruliness. But that’s on us and our ignorance.
Cameron Miller of Geneva is an author and minister. His fiction and poetry are available through Amazon. Contact him through his website at subversivepreacher.org.
DENIM SPIRIT: No more hating on gulls
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21.02.2024
Although it is a poor reflection on my character, I’ve admitted this before: I just do not trust them. I never met one I liked and I won’t be convinced to give them another chance. I just do not like geese. Gulls, yes. Ducks, of course. Terns and herons, who doesn’t? But those Canada Geese? Never.
So that’s my secret — and you probably hate me for my prejudice — but everyone has some bird they don’t like. Many people do not like gulls. In fact, I know a lot of people who simply dismiss gulls as noisy and unruly nuisances.
While there are 52 species of birds in the gull family, only three kinds are regulars hanging out around Seneca Lake: Ring-billed Gulls (adults grow to be crow-size and have yellow legs), the slightly larger Herring Gulls (pink legs), and the big bruisers on the block, Great Black-backed Gulls with a 5-foot-plus wing-span. (“Speaking of........
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