"Those are landgulls..."

An article in The Guardian on urban gulls. They're here because of our behaviours...

In a previous school where I taught, the gulls knew the timing of morning break, and would descend on the tennis courts and other areas where the students had been a few minutes after the whistles blew and the students were heading back for their next lesson, to scavenge for any dropped crisp.

Check out Tim Dee's book 'Landfill' for more on gulls and the landfills which they previously occupied, and which are reducing in number...hence the move into the cities where there is a ready supply of food from bins and people who throw them food despite signs asking them not to.

Tim Dee argues that rubbish tips sustain life and offer an alternative view of how we should treat any species who dares to live so closely among humans. About the book, Tim Dee says: 'I have been a lifelong birdwatcher but more recently I have found myself spending time watching people watching birds. Gulls in Britain are no longer seagulls and I've been fascinated in the last decade by the various ways that these birds have come ashore and come closer to us. In some ways they seem to have become more like us than any other bird. We might now evolve together.'