But
the sound I will miss most is the herring gulls; I fear, although we are only
moving a quarter of a mile away, our new location will be too far from the river
Mersey for them. In his classic 1953 work, The
Herring Gull’s World, the ethologist Niko Tinbergen wrote, ‘The voice of
the herring gull is wonderfully melodious.’ I’m not sure I agree, but it is certainly
characterful, and evocative of all our seaside summers past. Another fan of Larus argentatus is the Aberdeen
resident Esther Woolfson, who writes about them in her new book, Field Notes from a Hidden City: An Urban
Nature Diary. ‘Visible, audible, omnipresent, drifting endlessly in the sky
above us, L. argentatus is another of
the “urban exploiters” who seem numerous, safe in their very existence, but who
aren’t,’ she writes. ‘Monogamous, capable of mutual recognition, of respecting
their neighbours, living amicably with their partners, gulls are faithful to
their homes, practise “site fidelity” and return to the same nest sites
annually.’ In other words, gulls would be a far better symbol of uxuriousness than those
supposed models of amorous fidelity, the doves, who are actually quite tarty.
In fact, if they were human, herring gulls would be model citizens in Cameron’s
Britain. For they are the hardworking
families, the strivers not the skivers,
the birds who play by the rules and want
to get on. Except, of course, when they swoop down and steal from your bag
of chips with their beaks, as they have been known to do. Then they are part of
our something for nothing culture.