Category Archives: Backyard Birds

All the birds are moulting. Every last one. There’s sparrowfluff caught in my deckchair, and the feeder’s full of discarded gull bits. Even the crows have left boring black pinions in my rosemary.

There’s no crappier-looking creature than a moulting bird — any moulting bird. Well, maybe a blobfish; that’s little more than a booger with eyes. (Hee-hee. I said “booger.”)

This morning, I awoke to a loud pecking at my window, and a drift of down blowing in on the breeze. I’m not sure whether that down came from the crow, or from some other bird, but Mr. Crow certainly wasn’t looking his best. Check out those bare patches! Poor bugger’s shedding more down than a cheap duvet!

A quick observation, inspired by the sight of fifty sparrows trying to squeeze into a space no bigger than a paperback laid on its face: everything looks revolting, multiplied by fifty and crawling all over itself. Picture a nest of feathered termites: disgusting! I mean, even puppies would look nasty, in that context. Think of them, all fuzzy and eyeless, mewling, tiny tails wagging, feet paddling, as they swim the sea of writhing dogflesh! Worse still, kittens, with their needle-teeth bared, long tails snaking in and out — it’d be like stumbling upon a garter snake orgy…with teeth.

A garter snake orgy.

With teeth.

That is all.

My, but it’s been a while! I got a bit snowed under, but I’m back, bearing gulls. So many gulls. Lots and lots and lots of gulls.

Let me begin with the adults. I’ve rather been neglecting them, lately, in favour of their cute, spotted offspring. Well, neglecting them in the photographic sense, anyway. I haven’t stopped letting them eat my birdseed. The male’s become so tame that he doesn’t fly away at my approach, and occasionally tries to rub his face on my hand, as I fill the feeder. I wish he wouldn’t do that. I don’t know where his face has been. It’s looking a bit fleabitten, lately. He seems to be in the middle of a moult. Either that, or fleas have, in fact, been biting him. Not to mention which, well —

Looks like somebody’s been drawing on the gulls. Had a run-in with a biro, did you, fellow?

The upside of having (inadvertently, and indeed, quite unwillingly) tamed a gull is that he now lets me circle him with my camera, snapping as many pictures as I please. Better yet, he’s quite interested in human speech, and will stick around more or less indefinitely, if chatted up. I think he’s begun to associate my voice with food. Often, when the feeder’s empty in the morning, and he wakes me up with his shrieking, I’ll drag myself out of bed, all “Hold your horses, Loudenstein. It’s coming; it’s coming.” And then I chide him for his greed, as he digs in before I’ve finished, or tries to grab the whole seedbag. Gulls are not as stupid as they look. (Though, that’s not saying much. They look VERY stupid.)

I love taking pictures of gulls’ heads from this angle. They look like feathery Cthulhoids.

It looks soft. So soft. But it’s really close to the beak, so don’t try to touch it.

And now, for the minigulls. Only, just to be a jerk, and draw the (dubious) tension and anticipation out a bit longer, here’s a picture of two sets of COMPLETELY DIFFERENT minigulls, on other nearby roofs:

Left: This minigull is nearly ready to fly. All day long, it jumps up and down, flapping like mad. It doesn’t get anywhere. Right: This roof also has minigulls, not quite ready to fly, but nearer the goal than my minigulls.

And now — really, this time — here they are. My minigulls:

Yesterday afternoon, one of the adults showed up with a fat, juicy fish.

The minigulls wanted the fish. They wanted it badly. Round and round the rugged rock, the ragged rascals ran.

And the best part, saved for last:

Aww. Look at him go. He made it at least a foot, before crashing back to earth. How proud I was!