Becoming the Laridae
By Brenda Colwell | A Collection of Wanderings
Isn’t it amusing how quickly a flock of seagulls will accumulate directly overhead, and out of almost nowhere, when you throw a bit of your beach lunch into the air. One minute you are strolling barefoot and taking in the sea breeze and the next thing you know, you are in an Alfred Hitchcock movie, surrounded by flying M’s and V’s.
Using the straight-arm, powerful, upward sling technique, I send a bit of turkey sandwich into an empty sky. Empty until a seagull appears, swoops low, snatches it out of the air, arcs upward, flies down the beach, lands and gulps it down. Were they somewhere nearby just waiting for me to give the signal, like a choir director starting a song?
Immediately following this all-star catch, a commotion builds. Squawking starts in the distance. Seagulls are arriving fast, making demands for their fair share of the booty and crying out “MINE!” “MINE!”. They don’t even know what was thrown, they just want it. It could have been a rock, but here they come all hoping to catch one for themselves. A kid nearby joins the scuffle and empties a bag of potato chips into the air, hoping they will gain altitude in the wind. They don’t, but the wind does shuffle them around a bit on the sand and the birds go crazy. It doesn’t matter, seagulls from everywhere are flying in to land, grab and fly off. More people join in, methodically tossing their picnics into the air one delicious snack at a time until there is a complete food-seagull tornado in progress.
And why not engage in a little gullanthropy to support the local flock? They will eat anything, so the wet hot dog buns don’t go to waste. And what isn’t thrown to them, they will dig out of the trashcan anyway. So, I keep tossing things.
I have participated in this throwing circus more times than I can count. And usually, I never get a count of the birds. I am sure I have witnessed as many as 200 accumulate when there are multiple throwers and the food is good. And sometimes just a half dozen when the available morsels are scarce.
But I would love a scientific assessment of this familiar scene. I want to know if there is some toss-to-seagull ratio that can be assessed. And I wonder if some seagull actuaries might conduct a field study. Or maybe I can do it! What factors need to be considered? Perhaps the velocity of the throw? Perhaps the quantity of the morsels in the storm at any one time? Or maybe it is as simple as determining when the marauders last ate?
Of course, my tables are fictitious, but there must be some science that calculates what remains in my cooler and how many seagulls will appear when I start throwing.
And yet, amid a spectacle, I find myself standing under wings, some flapping, some just stretched out and floating. And they are so close I can almost reach up and touch them. Their funny double slices of pie feet hanging there that almost look useless until I figure out that they are both effective rudders and throttles for flight. And it feels like I belong to the flock. Like I am flying too. I just stand and stare.
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