For The Birds

Whose Territory?

We took sandwiches to the beach last week. Sunny, warm, beautiful surf.

Lacey was about to take a bite of her ham and cheese sandwich, when there was suddenly a commotion of flapping and blurred motion, as a seagull swept down from above and behind her, and took a swipe at her sandwich.

She had in in a firm grip. The gull didn’t manage to extricate the sandwich, but it did get a piece of her hand. It was a moment before we realized what had happened. Then she looked at her bloody hand, and at the bird that, by now, was over the ocean and circling back for another run.

A beach boy saw the encounter. He ran to alert the guy who comes several days a week with his predator hawk,

on contract to prevent what just happened to Lacey.

He introduced us to his Harris Hawk who sits on his hand as he patrols the beach, letting him loose when seagulls begin to gather around people.

I was surprised that, when the hawk flew, gulls harassed him, low flying him and screaming obscenities. I could see they never got close enough for the hawk to employ either his significant talons, nor his fearsome beak.

I expected the man to have contempt for the gulls. Many of us who have experience fending them off, refer to as “flying rats.”

“I feel sorry for the gulls,” he said. “They are now totally conditioned to human food. They hardly dive for bait fish. They’re starving.”

I have seen them swoop down and take a steak off the hot grill. Then quickly drop the hot meat into the edge of the surf, where scores of other gulls rush, amid a cacophony, making short work of the $40 steak.

Desperate measures for desperate gulls.

The issue of survival of the fittest, stands alongside the issue of species needing to cooperate if any of us are going to survive.

Surprised as I was, first by the gull’s attack, and then by the keeper’s empathy for his predator’s prey, I welcomed the reminder of our common survival needs that can seem contradictory. Somehow, while nature can seem oblivious to our seemingly casual cruelty, learning to respect, even the species who disrupt our lives, feels essential to any future for our recently arrived species.