August 17th

The gull season is nearly over. The herring gulls are still making a racket at dawn and whenever something disturbs them (like overflying buzzards) and there are still a few young ones whining from the rooftops. But the noise is becoming less and less by the day and most fledglings are now out of town in the fields or on the shore. Some are even making an honest living now, looking for worms as the harvested wheat fields get ploughed, scavenging fish bits out at sea or trying to steal food from other gulls and terns. I suppose the last one is not quite an honest living and there are of course some Crail youngsters that are developing their chip foraging skills on the High Street. It is a risky strategy and one by one they are getting hit by cars. The adult herring gulls that specialise in discarded rubbish and chips are very adept at dodging cars that can only have come from long years of practice and natural ability after natural selection of the unobservant and slow reacting individuals.

A young herring gull chasing a sandwich tern – gulls are often kleptoparasitic, so stealing a few chips on Crail High Street comes naturally