Love them or hate them, seagulls are part of seaside life

Mayor Steve Gazzard and his consort Diane Love. Picture: Helen Tribble (Image: Helen Tribble)

Greetings, citizens and visitors to Exmouth, where, on a bright, warm and sunny day I can be found sitting on those comfy wooden benches that surround our magnificent town square, The Strand.

I am not the only sentient being that has discovered the pleasures to be enjoyed from just sitting and chatting, for others strut and peck.
seagulls, to whom I have an ambivalence but whose behaviour fascinates, generate both love and hate in equal measure.

Bold upright posture, bright but cold eyes that seemingly can pierce steel, with that strut, and that’s the only word for it, strut !! From that toes spread, stately swing of coordinated body, hour after long hour, day after day a seagull must search and find food.

But the seagull is an omnivore, it eats anything, from toast to trifle, granola to gurnard, ice cream to BLT. Yet it is their group behaviour that I watch.

Picture if you will, a totally empty Strand, suddenly, by accident or design, food appears. Instantly like a scene from a Hitchcock movie or Marvel Comics comes the sound, a cross between the rustle of leaves in a storm and the whoosh of a surfacing whale.

Now look up, eyes wide, and from the roofs of Exmouth that are their cliffs a descending slowly rotating spiral mesh of seagulls drifts downward...milliseconds before landing, that calm elegance erupts explosively, screams, squawks, beating claws, stretched necks, staring eyes and scything bills.

I’ve seen the feeding frenzy of piranhas in the Amazon and by golly our own seagulls are their equal.

The wind’s turned a bit chilly, think I’m off home for a cuppa. Cheerio.