Oft-maligned gulls like ballerinas in sky
My wife and I were out and about the other day when she told me she wanted to go to a particular store in a shopping center near the corner of Hilliard-Rome and Trabue roads.
She said she wanted to shop for some stocking stuffers for the family.
I told her I would wait in the car and listen to the radio.
As she walked toward the store little did I know that I was about to be treated to an air show. Almost immediately a ring- billed gull flew over the car, followed by another and another.
I looked around and noticed a large flock of the gulls walking about the pavement in the middle of the parking lot.
They are called ring- billed gulls because they have a black ring around their yellow bills.
My wife’s shopping excursions, which usually last a long time, passed quickly as I watched the gulls’ aerobatics.
I think their soaring about in the sky with their long white wings is a visual melody.
However I have heard folks talk disparagingly about gulls because in the fall and winter they come into the city’s shopping centers to eat the food scraps discarded by humans. They are an omnivore and will eat about anything.
I even head one person call them “the rats of the bird world.”
In the fall, the gulls come south from Lake Erie, where they nested in the summer, to spend the cold months with us.
Last weekend, I spent considerable time watching the gulls soar in the blue sky over Seneca Lake in Guernsey County. They looked somewhat like ballerinas in white tutus dancing in the sky.
When I go fishing on Lake Erie in the summer, there are always gulls accompanying our boat, hoping to grab a fish that we have thrown back into the water.
Jim McCormac, a bird expert, said when gulls come down to the Columbus area for the winter they spend the nights on Alum Creek and Hoover reservoirs and then in the daytime fly into the city along the Olentangy and Scioto rivers to the shopping centers.
McCormac said gulls are “definitely beneficial to humans because they clean up after us.” They’re also lovely and watchable, he said.
It’s my opinion that if you are not a fan of gulls, but would take time to watch them soar on the breezes, you might change your opinion.
On another matter, now that we are in the month of December, this month’s moon is called the cold moon for good reasons.
Coincidentally, it will be full this evening. Here’s hoping the skies will be clear.
The winter solstice, the beginning of winter, will be at 11: 28 p. m. on Dec. 21. On the solstice, the length of daylight will begin increasing, slowly at first.
However, the air temperatures will not begin to warm until spring because of something called “heat lag.”
The oceans and land masses must warm before our air temperatures do.