Herring gulls

Herring gulls. Incomparable.

They keep an unremitting ceaseless watch on everything that goes on in the garden. Of particular interest is the time in the morning I come out with tiny cubes of hard cheese for the crows.

I call on the crow call, and back come corvid answers from various directions across the valley. The crows always send someone to see what’s up, but they aren’t always bothered about food – unlike the seagulls. The crows take as much as they want and leave the rest. The seagulls eat everything going.

The other morning, I went out onto the deck with a couple of bowls of rejected catfood, scoping the trees for crows, but they weren’t about just then – unlike the seagulls, who were ready and hopeful on their feeding station up on the Badger’s carpentry shed roof. I wanted the crows to have a chance at the catfood, so I just took it back in until they should appear.

“Oi!” A herring gull appeared on the rail of the deck, then hopped down to knock on the back door. “Where our catfud?”

So I took some out to them. They are everlastingly hungry. Peckish, even. “Give us your tired! Give us your poor! Give us your huddled masses!” they scream, with not the faintest idea what it means – “Give us anything! We’ll take it! Serve it up and make it quick. We all like figgy pudding so bring some out here!”