Mr & Mrs Seagull 15th October

Peter and I have often wondered where seagulls nest. There are so many of them and we had not noticed any nest sites before this trip. They love boats. Several of the vessels in our mooring area are rarely visited and these all have their resident birds. At the moment any boat not visited for a few days will be graced by at least one pair of seagulls building a nest. Our favourite pair are on a motor boat next to us. Mr and Mrs Seagull are very conscientious. They had already built their seaweedy nest when we moved to our mooring and proceeded to dive bomb us every time we went ashore. It didn't take them long to get used to us and now they sit tight and merely screech loudly in our direction as we pass. We threw a 'cat among the seagulls' today as I wanted to see how many eggs there were and photograph them. As we drew close their screeching drew birds from all directions to help scare us off. What a racket!!

Angry insults from above

 



There are two nests on a large, navy blue yacht on the other side of us. I'm not sure if it's the girls who sit or not, but each time we pass it appears that the two girls are on the nest and the fellas sit on the stern locker having a good old gossip. At first they also dived us as we passed, but now only hurl a few insults in our direction. You can almost hear the boys on the back saying to the girls, 'See love, we scared 'em off.'

Our latest seagull incident was quite humorous. On the eastern edge of the moorings is a lovely 42' Oceanic yacht. She is beautiful and well loved, however the owners had not visited for a week or so. Two pairs of gulls decided that this was prime real estate and promptly moved in. I did tell them it was a bad idea and they would regret it, but they took no notice. Yesterday the owners pulled up in the dinghy and were immediately dive bombed incessantly. The lady couldn't understand what was going on and had quite a bit of trouble tying off. She scrambled on board and then realised what was happening. After a short conversation between the owners I heard her say, 'Well I'm not doing it! You get rid of them!' Then they disappeared down the hatch. A few minutes later out he came and stood for a while looking at the stern nest with his hands on his hips. The gulls were going crazy. Obviously a decision had been made and he bent down and the whole nest, eggs and all went over the side. Then it was the turn of the nest near the mast. I felt sorry for the birds, but Peter and I had a chuckle as we watched the whole performance.

We have carefully examined the boats in the mooring area that have devices on board that are designed to scare birds and deep them off. Some have CD's, flags, pretend owls or plastic bags hanging from the rigging. None of these work. Netting seems to do the best job by simply keeping them out and not allowing the birds to land. In Albany we had some success with a cargo net that you use to cover a loaded trailer. We have purchased another one and will stretch them over the cockpit and the foredeck along with a thin string or two tied above the boom. Hopefully this will discourage the gulls from using Rene as a nursery.