Friends of a Feather

I had never paid much heed to seagulls before moving to Nova Scotia. Yes, I had seen them before, and even far away from the sea.  At our farm house in Ontario, they would flock behind the tractors tilling the ground or laying seed. And of course, we have had other seaside ventures in our long life.

But here at our home in Granville Ferry, we cannot avoid them. And I have to say they are magnificent. Their colours of bright white, soft grey and black remind me of the hues of the 1970s Swedish films by Bergman. And they are graceful, playful and from time to time fierce.

We have discovered that there is a pair of them that seems to make our immediate environs home. Perhaps the previous owners had fed them from the master bedroom window. For some reason they come to the roof top outside our window in the early morning and chatter away at us inside. To get our attention they will tap lightly at the glass. And if my partner is sitting at his desk in the day, one or the other of them will land and try to get his attention.  

But feed them, we have not: At least not from there, and certainly not very regularly. Other neighbours do. They are the garbage recyclers of our neighbourhood.

Our pair like to settle in the long grass at the foot of our lot on the grass flat that is submerged at high tide. But apart from our rooftop visits, they have not paid much attention to us. Even when we sit on the deck by the water, they have kept their distance.

On one of the few warm, windless sunny evenings of late, we sat at the water’s edge for a riparian supper of pizza and salad. And it was delicious and uneventful from an aviary point of view. How pleasant! How peaceful!

My partner climbed back up the hill to retrieve the next course, the remnants of one of my three birthday cakes provided by friends, and neighbours. It was a rich chocolate whisky cake with whipped cream and raspberries.

Well, I did not need to be told of his pending arrival with the delights. The gulls swarmed close overhead, squawking loudly, and our two landed on the grass close by… indeed the closest they had ever allowed themselves to come to us. Well, if you think either of us would surrender even a crumb of such a creamy chocolate delicacy, you don’t know us very well. But the pair of gulls stayed chattering quietly at us – one might even say clucking.

We decided they needed a name since they appeared to have adopted us in a manner of speaking. So the larger one, which we presume stereotypically to be the male has been crowned “Jesse”. The slightly smaller one is now “Jennifer”. We aren’t sure yet whether they actually respond to these nomenclatures; but we like to think that they are beginning to do so.

Yesterday evening as the sun moved westward overhead, Jesse  landed on our deck’s high-top table and started to chatter away at us as we sat inside with our happy hour beverage. Then Jennifer appeared and the two settled down for a rest for the longest time, preening and occasionally looking in at us.

This was a first. I know they are trying to weaken our resolve; but as lovely as this was, we do not wish to encourage such close encounters over a longing for food scraps.  But we have to say, we are enjoying the new friendship, even if the bond appears to be in a hope for nourishment.