Where Seagulls Dare

Some time in late July I was walking through a churchyard when I noticed a baby seagull walking amongst the gravestones. I turned around to look at the top of the twelfth century spire, and a seagull swooped off of it directly at my head, squawking very loudly.

Let's put this into perspective. British seagulls, unlike seagulls from some other parts of the world, are big. They weigh a kilogram, have four foot wingspans, and can achieve diving airspeeds of 40 MPH. You can work out the momentum for yourself; this is not something that I did quantitatively for myself whilst the gull was darting at my head, but qualitatively you can be assured that I did.

It actually made three passes at me by the time I got the other side of the consecrated grounds, and in its third attempt I ducked behind a wall to make sure that it wouldn't hit me, and to see how it would negotiate the wall as a foil. It passed over, and I walked on, a little bit shaken since though I'd heard that seagull attacks were quite common in the UK (gulls are resident not only all around the coast but quite a way inland too, and since the UK is an island that's a significant portion of it), I hadn't actually come under attack myself before.

But I realised that it was silly to be afraid of a seagull. In fact, the more I thought about it the more curious I became: my main wonder was what it would actually do to me if I just stood there. I also wondered if it would learn that I am no threat, if it would change its behavioural patterns, and so on. So I decided to go back.

The seagull was still there, and though I couldn't find the baby seagull it must've still been around since the parent seagull once again took to swooping at my head. It was unnerving still at first, and I constantly ducked into the doorway of the church to avoid its dive, but quickly I became braver and after just a few more attempts managed to stand and even (very cautiously!) look up at the seagull as it flew overhead. I managed to find the baby seagull, and approached it, to find out if the parent's behaviour would change.

This might all seem quite cruel, but it wasn't really: for a start, seagulls, because of this behaviour, are widely seen as pests, and pests that ought to be culled, which is the polite name for the mass slaughter of animals that bug us. Whereas by observing in the manner that I did, it became clear quite quickly why they display this kind of behaviour. The baby seagull, when I approached it, could barely fly. In fact, it could barely even hop, and so I managed to get very close to it indeed. It was a sitting duck (er, seagull) for any predators, including me if I had been more of the mindset that they're pests.

Though I observed the behaviour for quite a time, the parent did not become used to me and cease its bombing raids. This was a bit of a disappointment, since I was hoping it'd be a bit more intelligent than that, to know that if I'm already within a foot of the baby and not doing anything to it then it's probably okay. On the other hand, I'm not sure what strategies the predators of seagulls use. Perhaps they toy with their prey for a while. At any rate, the seagull hopped over a wall presently, and with it the attacks from the parent seagull ceased immediately. Both mother and father circled off into the distance crying out, but seemingly not too concerned that any further incident would occur.

So what did I take from this? Mainly just the obvious fact that seagulls, these seagulls at least, are only concerned about protecting their very vulnerable young, and will not even actually harm big potential predators such as myself, just attempt to scare them away by diving and squawking. As soon as the threat is gone, they will go; they hold no apparent malice. Just business, ma'am. One interesting point is that there was another seagull on the tower that, I would guess, was the other parent and seemed to get mildly involved when I got very close to the chick indeed, but otherwise was basically not particularly concerned, or happy to leave it to the other parent, the one doing the diving (which I pretty much randomly took to be the mother).

Afterwards I read a lot about what seagulls do, and it turns out that actually seagulls do attack to the point of harming people, cutting heads and so on by draping their feet across them in dives. Mainly they go for people with bald heads, because they see shininess as a particular threat (I have no idea why that should be). No serious injuries as a direct result of seagull contact have been reported that I can find, though they can be a very imposing and scary menace. I also found out that July and August are basically the months in which chicks are raised, so the seagull culling points come up at this time as they get touchy.

So, if you're being aggrevated by a seagull, I suggest that you check around for a young seagull. There almost certainly will be one. If you can't find one, then if you want the attacks to cease you'll just have to walk away. If you can find the young seagull, you can probably shoo it away. If you're bald, wear a hat. If you don't have a hat, you'd probably best cover your head when they attack, like I instinctively did for most of the dive runs. If you do manage to foolishly look up with caution as I did, you'll be in for a very spectacular sight. I wouldn't swipe out at a seagull, since you're just likely to damage both yourself and it, and no good can come of that; moreover, you're just scaring the thing to start with, whether you intended it or not, so scaring it more when you're many times bigger than it isn't really sporting.

On the overall seagull situation, it's a shame in a way that there are so many because we always tend to see common animals as being less worthy. But gulls are pretty cool, especially when it's not chick rasing season, and they also have the nice advantage of being named with one of the few Celtic loanwords into English. Whenever I'm somewhere well inland that doesn't have seagulls, I don't particularly miss them until I return to a place where they cry out and then, anywhere around the country, I feel more at home. If even one beak were silenced, I'd be sad about it.