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I spent a pleasant half hour down on the seafront today, watching black-headed gulls scream insults at each other. The males in full breeding plumage strutted round as if they owned the place, pausing every now and then to thrust their heads forward and yell rude words at the top of their voices. If a poor male still in its winter plumage dared land nearby, it got a mouthful of abuse, and if it refused to leave, its assailant took off, flew in a circle, and tried to land on its head.
I like to imagine that there was a cluster of females nearby, happily knitting (or perhaps writing fanfic; it is 2010, after all), who looked up occasionally to shake their heads in derisive amusement at the antics of the boys. "And they think it impresses us!" they mutter. "I mean, here we are, ready and waiting for them, but they haven't actually noticed us, so busy are they with trying to score points off each other. Um, hello... Boys?"
Animals are seldom more amusing than when they're trying to look terrifying. Well, unless they actually are terrifying.
Blackbirds have also been alternately amusing and annoying me recently. A female one has been wandering around the garden filling her beak with nesting material, but apparently forgetting the important final stage of the process: actually flying away with your loot. She either tries to put so much in her mouth that it all falls out, or else she loses interest half way through and wanders off, going, "Food!" The male, though, has taken to standing on a branch a few inches away from my window, singing its heart out at 4.30 in the morning, forgetting that the whole "dawn" thing is an important part of the dawn chorus. I wouldn't have thought that a single blackbird could wake a person from sleep, but it's woken me up every day this week. Grr!
I like to imagine that there was a cluster of females nearby, happily knitting (or perhaps writing fanfic; it is 2010, after all), who looked up occasionally to shake their heads in derisive amusement at the antics of the boys. "And they think it impresses us!" they mutter. "I mean, here we are, ready and waiting for them, but they haven't actually noticed us, so busy are they with trying to score points off each other. Um, hello... Boys?"
Animals are seldom more amusing than when they're trying to look terrifying. Well, unless they actually are terrifying.
Blackbirds have also been alternately amusing and annoying me recently. A female one has been wandering around the garden filling her beak with nesting material, but apparently forgetting the important final stage of the process: actually flying away with your loot. She either tries to put so much in her mouth that it all falls out, or else she loses interest half way through and wanders off, going, "Food!" The male, though, has taken to standing on a branch a few inches away from my window, singing its heart out at 4.30 in the morning, forgetting that the whole "dawn" thing is an important part of the dawn chorus. I wouldn't have thought that a single blackbird could wake a person from sleep, but it's woken me up every day this week. Grr!
