Nature Diary... A welcome visitor

Though they are hated by many I've come to have a healthy respect and a great fondness for our local Herring Gulls. Yes, some are just like humans - impatient and ill- tempered, but others can behave in a very respectful manner. The trouble mostly arrives when they are hungry, and who can blame them?

The gull in the photo has been a regular visitor for about 3 years now, and first appeared when his parent  brought him to feed. Since then he's learned to be patient, and what I might call 'respectful' and has found he is welcome to visit when he's patient and willing to perhaps not receive any food. And more and more he's finding his own way to his chosen feeding places but seems to very much appreciate the large stone bowl we leave out for the birds, with clean water in it every day. 

This morning he arrived in the bright, warming sunshine, landed elegantly on the stone wall of our balcony, looked towards the glass patio doors as usual, with an expression today which was I could cheerfully imagine signaled a peaceful 'Hello' then as carefully as he always has been he drank his fill. Pausing to look about him, and seeming to to be contentedly refreshed, he took flight.

He comes for the clean water just about every day, and never missed a day when we had the icy weather. I would lever out the thick, solid layer of ice which had formed overnight, and fill the stone bowl with fresh water. The Gull never missed a day, and sometimes made three or four visits a day to drink when everything else was frozen.

This is about the 4th Gull that has become tame, and it saddens me when tourists are sitting by the sea pigging out on a massive pile of fish and chips and feeling irritated by the Gulls whose main staple diet is the fish being downed by the often-overweight humans who stuff their faces with just about everything.

Point made.