Tuesday, February 28, 2012

February 28: White wings

Gulls were unusually active around my office this afternoon. We're only a mile from the ocean, so seeing a gull is an everyday occurrence. But we don't often get quite the visitation we had today. Every time I glanced out the window I saw a flash of white wings dipping over the trees. Gulls soared over the dam. At one point, I was startled by the tiny image of a gull flying past, its reflection caught in a photograph on my director's desk. During a conversation with a co-worker, I had to consciously stop looking away from him every time a gull came into my peripheral vision. It was a little bit like seeing stars, those brief glimpses of quickly moving white birds throughout the day.

There's a dairy farm near Route One in Rockport over which a flock of gulls can regularly be found swarming. It can sometimes look like a scene from "The Birds." I've always assumed they were finding things to eat amid the spilled feed and cow droppings. While our gulls today weren't quite that numerous, I do wonder what they were attracted to. Was our neighbor tossing out bread again? Was something interesting (for a gull, that would translate to "food-producing") happening in the open water of the river out back? Or were they just gracing us with their presence?

Gull visitation--
a blessing of white feathers
or a distraction?

No comments:

Post a Comment