I’m seeing several gulls – too far away to see exactly what sort- from my front windows this summer due to the building work going on on the far side of the burial ground. They dug out a lot of soil to make a level spot for the two bungalows by the road and heaped it up along the edge. Now it’s being levelled over all the rest of the large site behind where the bungalows have been started. Gulls are very fond of newly turned earth.
The Herring Gull. Illustration from ‘A Sparrow’s Life’s as Sweet as Ours by Carrie Ackroyd.
Each bird illustration has a page of information written by John McEwen.
Herring Gulls have a wingspan of up to 5¼ feet and up until the second half of the 20th century were usually to be found by the sea. Lack of fish made them move inland and become a problem in many places where they often make newspaper headlines by stealing food from peoples picnics and violently excreting what they’ve just eaten when angry.
Apparently numbers have halved since the 1970s and they were Red Listed because of their rapid decline.
The photo below is from the time we had a beach hut at Felixstowe for a couple of years when Colin was poorly.
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Sue
