peterbirks | Gulls On Film

I see that the father of disc jockey Emma B (who I wish was named Edgar Broughton, but apparently isn't) has been given a conditional discharge and £400 costs for battering a seagull to death and then stringing it up (presumably "to encourage the others") because said gull shat on his wife's hair and lunch, in that order.

I was cheering the man to the rafters until I got to paragraph 3 of the story, where it was pointed out that Mr Broughton was a member of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and claimed that "he didn't enjoy killing it".

Well, bloody hell, I would have. I hate seagulls with a passion. Whenever I stay on the coast, they drive me mental. All reasonable liberal sensitivity goes out of the window. If there is one species ripe for and deserving of ethnic cleansing in the Birks Book of Birds and Mammals, it isn't the pigeon, it isn't the grey squirrel, and it isn't the fox. It's the fucking seagull.

Fortunately, I live nowhere near the coast, so the paths of seagulls and I rarely cross. You might see the occasional tourist in Trafalgar Square who has flown up the Thames in search of the bright lights, but as a rule, seagulls stick to the coast and I stick to inland. Long may it continue.

Volcano Merapi Update: A total wimp. C'mon, either blow or piss off the pot.

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I forever find myself amazed at the severity of the punishment meted out at times for animal 'cruelty' when compared with that meted out to those who deal in the creation of misery for humankind.
Pete, I'm surprised you don't see more gulls in Lewisham - maybe somebody in the locality is eating them :-)

There has apparantly been something like a 50% drop in Seagull numbers over the past 3 years. It's been blamed on overfishing, but maybe your post opens up another possibility? But gulls have long since left the coasts, I'm 200 miles inland here and we get masses of them. John W

200 miles inland? In the UK?

Re: Gulls
(Anonymous)
2006-05-18 11:13 am UTC (link)
200 miles inland? In the UK?
No, Germany
John W

I've wondered at the paucity of seagulls in the Lewisham area, although since it's a blessing as far as I am concerned, I haven't investigated it. I used to get them flying around at the Oval every so often, which is also a mile south of the Thames.

Two possibilities occur to me. One is that there is a bloody great hill between me and the river at Lewisham. So perhaps the seagulls never get round to straying from Greenwich. The other is that there are millions of crows on Blackheath, which is the top of the hill between Lewisham and Greenwich. Maybe crows deter gulls?

I forgot to mention my final and, I think conclusive, point about seagulls. The group that called itself "A Flock Of Seagulls" were, in the main, unmitigated crap.

PJ

That should be "between me and the river at Greenwich".

I've never been able to see seagulls in quite the same light since watching Finding Nemo ("Mine, mine, mine"). It always fascinated me to know what happened when Pixar dubbed the movie into other languages where the joke would be lost.

Who's Emma B?

As Brian Harvey - he may know!
I think she is the one Page 3 model that made a career in the public eye for other activities than posturing.

Ahhh "POP" music.

Do you know of any locations where I can purchase needles for my record player in order to play my 78's?

Don't you nake your own from hazel??

Last time I did that Hazel slapped my face and refused to speak to me for a week!

a couple years ago I woke early one morning to the screams of a flock of robins that normally habit our llama pasture. They had vacated the pasture for the surrounding trees and were unhappy about something. On top a portion of the fence near the house where the birds usually hang out but was now vacant was something I had to investigate more closely. It was the head of a robin. Evidently, a crow had just killed one in the pasture and had put the head on the fence where the robins hang. This crow I'd seen about the pasture in the past running off other birds was recognizable because one leg was normal length and the other was more than an inch longer and it stuck out to the side... it hopped about on one leg. In the next few days, I started finding pieces of dead mice and birds in the llama's water. I saw the culprit a few times flying in and dropping his refuse in the drinking water and then fly off. The llamas wouldn't drink the tainted water so I had to dump the tubs and refill them a few times each day. I suspect that that crow was either trying to run the llamas off or wanted to poison them so it would have llama for dinner. I tried my slingshot to no avail, I'm a terrible aim and I don't own guns but my aim wouldn't do any better except to scare off my bug eater bird friends. My wife found the solution at a crafts store, a fake crow-but very realistic. We hung the 'dead' crow near the llama water and it was the crow's turn to scream... then leave and didn't bother the llama water again... what was good for the crow was good for the llamas too... unfortunately I can't say that no animals were hurt during the filming of that summer... I gave the murdered robin a burial with the headless uneaten robin body I found in the pasture and the robins eventually returned but they were gone for a couple weeks.

Peace

Nice photos on your journal, Ed.

I sometimes suspect that the Hopi word-phrase Koyaanisqatsi has a lot going for it.

PJ

Surely this is an out-take from Iain Banks' Wasp Factory?

it's actually a tale of our pasture and the llama ladies

Peace

Gulls On Film

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Emma B - who dat?

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