Summer holidays and the sun burning my skin are always accompanied by the shrill shouts of the gull.
Now, it is winter and it is constantly raining. But we pick out the good days to soak up the little sun that we get. But in these rare sunny moments between rain and wind, the birds also come out to play a bit. The gulls near the ocean always accompany the people who dare to move outside to eat their food, in hopes of some food scraps falling to the ground.
The gull is after all a scavenger bird always eating anything that falls to the ground.
Recently, we went to the docks to eat some fish and chips, to soak up some of the sun that tried to stick its head between the rainy clouds. A friendly gull flew around us in hopes that some of our food scraps might fall to the ground.
Usually, I never feed them, and in this case, we also did not do this. But I felt sorry for the friendly friend eating any scraps it found between the cobblestones.
The little friend skipped around our table and I could take some up close photographs of its complexion and face. I could bend down between the chairs to get nice angles of the friendly friend.
The gull is so much a part of life close to the ocean. The fishing boats are always full of different gulls, as they know they will get free fish. The harbour and docks, where these fishing boats unload their catches of the day, are also full of scraps that the birds embrace; free food in nature is a rare event and you can bet that these birds know about it. The harbour is always full of gulls, the characteristic shrill shouts always fill the air around the boats and cleaning stations.
Even though we might think this is a bad thing, many times our interventions in life can inadvertently help others. In the wake of our destruction, we might leave a trail of abundance and life. I am always reminded of so many plants that rely on our intervention to survive, in the destruction we leave behind an abundance of plants that emerge through the disturbed soil. In our destruction, something of significance can come forth.
In the end, it is always a balance between our needs and their needs. The friendly face of the gull reminds me of the delicate system we are thrown into - we fight for our survival even though it does not always look like it. They fight for their survival. Unfortunetaly, our weapons are stronger than theirs, our power is significantly more complex than theirs.
It is always a battle between us and them, we and the other, that which we cannot understand, and if we even attempt to understand, we subsume and subvert them (the other) into our conceptual world thus relinquishing the very thing we wanted to do in the first place, namely, understand the other in their radical alterity.
The other seems to always escape our grasp, the gull with its friendly face and demeanour that shouts "Please, do not hurt me," escapes my world of abstract capital and private property, of feeding my needs through material gain, and feeding my stomach with artificial nutrition. We are truly strange beings immersed in strange times.
In any case, I hope you enjoyed these photographs of a friendly friend, trying to snatch the fish and chips on my plate!
For now, happy birding and keep well.
All of the musings and thoughts are my own, albeit inspired by the friendly face of this feathered friend. The photographs are also my own, taken with my Nikon D300 and Tamron 300mm zoom lens.
