Seagulls have always fascinated me. As a boy growing up on naval bases I used to enjoy watching them dive from great heights and skim across the surface of the water. I always thought of them as the ‘eagles of the sea,’ despite the fact that the sea eagle is an entirely different type of bird. I also conveniently ignored the fact that most seagulls are really scavengers that would prefer trailing garbage scows looking for moldy refuse rather than preying on the creatures of the deep.
Their flocks, which at distances appear to be great swarms of white insects, enthralled me and often, as a teenager living on the shores of Narragansett Bay, I would hike out to a small bird sanctuary and spend hours watching them argue with one another on the beach, chase one another through the air, and at times my gaze would fix upon one lonely gull flying high above the others majestically scanning the world below his steady wings as if he alone were the king of all he surveyed.
Gulls are interesting fliers. They can soar for long distances, gaining speed as they gently descend, or they may flap their long wings and execute cunning maneuvers with great skill and daring, wending their circuitous way among their kin. They are just as interesting in repose, however. They may bob up and down on the swelling waves for hours on end looking more like a duck than the great and mighty seagull.
Occasionally in fits of anthropomorphic fancy, I have decided that seagulls are sentient in much the same way as people. I’ve read that gulls have been known to live up to forty years and one day, as I sat on the railroad tracks on northern Aquidneck Island staring out at the gulls calling and chasing each other away from their food, I began to wonder what thoughts might come to a mind that spends hours on end, year after year, soaring over the desert of the sea.