Of all the time I misspent during my misspent youth, having now reached the age of greater wisdom (or at least grayer hair), I now count much of it wasted if it was not spent looking at gulls. Like many naturalists who include birds in their studies, I am absolutely rubbish at identifying gulls. Unlike […]
When I was growing up in a fishing town on the Oregon coast, gulls were seemingly everywhere at all times. From the waterfront to the rooftops of buildings throughout the town to the car park of the nearby national park, examples of a range sizes, shapes, and seemingly inexplicable white, grey, and brown color patterns could be seen at different times throughout the year. Quarrelsome, sometimes confrontational, and nearly always raucus, I – and most everyone I knew – at best ignored them whenever we could and insulted them when we couldn’t.
I haven’t yet seen a copy of the new U.S. edition of Tim Dee’s highly acclaimed Landfill; Notes on Gull Watching and Trash Picking in the Anthropocene here at The Biggest Week in American Birding, but I certainly hope someone will have thought to bring in a few copies so that those in attandance will […]
Whenever I find myself looking at a gull and not being able to put a species level identification to it, I invariably think back to my childhood alongside the mouth of the Columbia River and lament how much of my youth was wasted in things other than learning to identify the ever-present and seemingly endless numbers of gulls in the area.