Southampton

I went to see my brother Ben, who lives in Southampton with his girlfriend, Steph. Their flat overlooks the river. As soon as we got there I looked out of the window at the river through their hefty binoculars and saw an oystercatcher. It was standing on a half-submerged wooden structure, which had recently been looted of its metal by opportunistic gypsies. At first I didn’t know what bird it was that I was seeing. It was black and white and anonymous until it revealed the distinctive pointy orange oyster-catching beak that it had been hiding in its feathers.

Near the lone oystercatcher were a group of about twenty other birds all huddled together and still. They were grey. I decided they must be sandpipers; they seemed about the right size. After a while they all flew away. They had been sitting there doing nothing for a few hours and then they just flew away as if they had decided in an instant with one mind.

Steph got some old bread. I think she soaked it in water or milk. We threw it over the balcony for the seagulls. They all swooped about catching the bread chunks in mid air. These seagulls were black-headed gulls with the dark mark beside the eye, which will later spread in the summer and complete the eponymous black head.

They are smaller and friendlier than the aggressive skinhead herring gulls of Brighton and Dover, and they have less grating screeches.

Steph tried to get one to take bread out of her hand but none of them were quite that bold, even when she looked away to make them feel safer. They weren’t hungry enough for such potential danger.

 

(taken by Joe Punton)