The other day, while on my pre-sunset cruise, across the lake from our house, I noticed two seagulls acting peculiarly. As I approached, they began to swoop down and seemingly dive- bomb my boat. At first, I thought they were playing, but with each pass, they came closer and closer, at one point coming so close that I felt the breeze from their pass. They appeared to be agitated, and I thought their behavior was odd. The next evening, I returned to the scene of the crime, armed with my portable digital video camera and my still camera. Sure enough, there they were, perched on the little island at the narrows to the middle lake, and as soon as they saw me, they alighted and proceeded to do what they had done the evening before. They were like Kamikaze pilots. I took some video of their behavior, and while I did manage to capture one or two close passes, the video is jerky and the birds are only visible for a nanosecond. Oddly enough, I had better luck with the still camera. Of course I took a hundred unsuccessful pictures of the lake and trees with no sign of the swoopers, and several photos have just a webbed foot or a wing tip in the frame, but I did manage to get one or two decent shots showing the perpetrators. I was fascinated by this phenomenon, because in my almost 50 years of boating, I’d never seen seagulls behave like this. What was going on? Is this too a product of global warming; are the animals all going crazy? On day three, I brought my neighbor along to view the swooping gulls, and it was then that I saw why I think they were acting the way they were. There along the shoreline, near their little island, was a baby gull floating around in the calm water. It couldn’t have been more than a week or two old, and I don’t think I’d ever seen a baby seagull before. I’m guessing these swooping gulls were protecting their young, and I was an intruder on their otherwise quiet lake. Gulls are not my favorite birds. They crap on my boat cover, their call is like fingernails on a blackboard, and they are one of Mother Nature’s scavengers. Nevertheless, they play an important role in a marine environment, and I recognize their part in the natural order of things. I waited for the swoopers to land in the water and putted over to them. We had a bizarre Camp-David-like conversation, and while I don’t speak fluent gull, I told them that I was sorry for causing them any distress, and by the way, I mean their baby no harm. Then I gunned the motor and tried to swamp them. I am, after all a homo sapien, and a semi-retired one to boot, which makes me a double threat.
The huge Walmart class action suit filed by women claiming discrimination was thrown out by The Supreme Court. Perhaps the judges were concerned that such a big class action could have deleterious implications for the rest of corporate America. Isn’t this a little like saying the banks are too big to fail, so we must bail them out? Too big to fail or trust-busting; either way there’s government intervention. Once again, profit and power trump justice. Big wildfires in Sierra Vista, Arizona and parts of Texas. 4 Million acres have been destroyed so far this year alone. Up here in the Great White North, rain has been the big story, and it came down hard for most of last week. My weather gurus up here have predicted a hot dry summer, but so far, a week in, I don’t see it. I spoke to one of my buddies in Banff last week, and he said that the above-average snow pack in the mountains has made for a wet Spring. I remember many times well into July when Shauna and I encountered deep snow hiking at the higher elevations in the Canadian Rockies. Odd to need “gators” in July.
Anyhow, this is your seagull behavioral expert, signing off. Next week, join me as I recount the story of the annual Buffalo television shoot.
Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2011 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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