The Secret Life of Seagulls

It was around 4:45 in the morning when the screaming started.  The sound dragged my mind into the waking world and, for just a second, I wondered if something horrible had happened.  I wiped the sleep out of my eyes and peered toward the ceiling. A feeble gray light seeped in through the skylights and the shrieking continued. It sounded like there were hundreds of them up there and they were yelling at each other as loud as they could.

"Freaking seagulls," I muttered to myself. I pulled the pillow over my head and tried to go back to sleep.  

The next morning, I sleepily poured myself a cup of coffee and opened the shade of the little side window of our apartment.  The building next to ours is shorter and that window is about level with their roof.  Outside, the sky was dark with clouds and it was raining softly. A sullen gray and white bird stared back at me.  Her eyes were red rimmed and her feathers were messy and sticking up all over the place.  She looked like hell.

"Rough night, Eloise?" I asked as I sipped my coffee.  She glared back with a look that was exhausted, protective, and angry.  It was a complicated and complex glare that only a brand new mom could have pulled off.  Under Eloise's wing, a spotted brown and black ball of fluff tried to push itself further under and into her body and out of the cold of the morning.  I assumed that the ball of fluff's two siblings were under there as well.  I wondered where Eloise's mate Winston was.  Off getting food, I imagined.

When Jen and I first moved into a building in Chinatown in downtown Victoria, we expected the neighborhood to have some interesting residents.  We didn't expect, however, that our most numerous and nosiest neighbors would be able to fly.  It never occurred to us that we would be constantly startled when one of our two pound flying neighbors would decide that a skylight is a good place to make an emergency landing and hit it with enough force to shake the ceiling.  We never could have imagined that we'd watch our neighbors make their home cozy, give birth, raise their young, and then leave, and that we'd feel a little loneliness when they were gone. We definitely never believed that we would be spending part of our day staring out a window watching a couple of birds.  Birds that we named.

Almost every city and town that I've every lived in has had gulls flying around in the background.  In Victoria, and indeed in most of the West Coast, the seagulls are Glaucous-winged Gulls (Larus glaucescens), and despite being so common that they are almost invisible, they can be fascinating creatures.  Their name means pale-winged and, as adults, they have a large white head, neck, and body, with a gray back.  Their wings are gray and have pale white-tips. They are about two feet long and adults weigh a bit over two pounds. In short, they look like the type of seagull you have seen all your life.

Glaucous-winged Gulls live close to saltwater and they are so common because they aren't food snobs.  They are opportunistic eaters who are happy to dine most anywhere.  When the tide is low, we've seen them eat crabs, fish, sea-urchins, jelly-fish and even star fish.  Inland, we've seen them go for French fries, worms, thrown-away fast food wrappers, centipedes, Starbuck frappacinos, and pretty much anything remotely edible left in fine trash cans through-out the greater downtown area.

Throughout the winter, our apartment is pretty quiet. The seagulls don't really hang about in the rainy season. However, as we get closer to summer, the seagull party starts. For urban breeding grounds, gulls particularly like flat roofs much like the one on our apartment building.

Glaucous-winged Gulls are social birds and they nest in colonies. Adult seagulls often return to the same colony year after year often with the same mate from the previous years.  We like to believe that Winston and Eloise found love at first sight.

When a Glaucous-winged Gull couple find a good spot to settle down, they get territorial and protective of their breeding grounds.  They - well, like most of the people downtown it's mostly the males - will squabble, fight and shriek at any other gull they think might be disrespecting them.  In our neighborhood, the gulls seem to prefer to get their aggression out every morning between 3 and 5 a.m.  

The females will build a nest mound out of dried plants and feathers and, after a romantic early spring, she'll lay two or three speckled eggs.  For almost the next month, she'll sit on the eggs and keep them warm.  To be perfectly honest, since it's hard to tell the difference between Eloise and Winston, they might trade off. He seems like an involved parent. At any rate, after about 26 days, small brown balls of fluff with black polka dots will emerge from the eggs.  

These cute little balls of fluff like to wobble around and, well, look all cute.  However, their main activity is to cry pathetically for food. You would never imagine a little brown ball of fluff could ever destroy a person's sanity.  And, yet, our research shows that if you surround an apartment with them and have them do their high-pitched little squeaks of hunger all hours of the day, without even the common decency to take a weekend off, a person will be stretched to the breaking point.

I think the crying even gets to their parents. I haven't seen many non-domestic animals that I can actually describe as looking tired, but Eloise and Winston not only look tired, they often look frazzled.  During this time period, one of the gulls will stay with the chicks, sitting on them to keep them warm, and the other will go get food.

Each adult gull has a yellow bill with a red subterminal spot. This is a red spot near the end of their bill that when chicks peck, the parents are stimulated to regurgitate food.  When you don't have hands or shopping bags, it's the best way to carry food to your young.  If your parents didn't regurgitate raw jellyfish to feed you, well, then, they obviously didn't love you enough.

For the next month and a half, the adult gulls watch the chicks, provide them warmth and safety, and regurgitate food just like every good parent should.  The chicks stay inside the little territory that their parents have marked out.  Otherwise, their nearby gull neighbors will be very angry and killing wandering chicks isn't uncommon.  

It takes about four years for a Glaucous-winged Gull to reach full adulthood.  Between the cute ball of fluff stage and the dignified white and gray dressed adults are the teen years.  Teens are easy to spot as they have dark bills, mottled gray feathers, and act all awkward and surly. Chicks are first capable of flight around 35-54 day.  They slowly get bigger, changing from little balls of fluff to little fluffy birds.  Their wing nubbins will grow and they'll walk around flapping them.  

And then one day they'll be gone.  And so will their parents.

For the first time in months, you'll have relative quiet. Winter comes and you forget about all about birds. You'll enjoy getting full nights of sleep in a warm and cozy bed.  However, one early spring morning, you'll be woken up in the wee hours by horrible shrieking.  And, if you're me, for a brief second you'll be terrified that perhaps the world is ending and then a slow smile will cross your face as you wonder if Winston and Eloise have returned.

The next morning; though, will be filled with curses. So will the next one. And the morning after that.