It's A Herring Gull's World (We Just Live In It)

Tom Cox

24 Jul 2026 — 8 min read

Rod Gull, one of the herring gulls who live on our roof, wondering whether or not I'm going to be kind enough to donate my last salt'n'vinegar Popchip to him.

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People will tell you that herring gulls are the thugs and vandals of the bird universe but, after four months of living in close proximity to them, I would say that, far more than that, what they are is drama queens. Sonically speaking, they're creatures who normalise histrionics. Noises of the volume and pitch that, from another animal, would signal a life-altering crisis, are just part of everyday communication for a gull. "Oh my god, what has HAPPENED?" I have asked many times around dawn, listening to the pair who live on our roof, their babies and their compatriots. The answer to this question will invariably be "Some snotty rival gulls from the newer bungalows flew over and came a little closer to our patch than would have been our preference", "One of us saw what we thought might have been some discarded Edam rind in Linda's garden" or "Sorry we just felt like making some noise, as we had been quiet for almost a full eleven minutes and it was getting kind of boring." You soon get used to it but there can also be an unfortunate Gull Who Cried Wolf aspect to this. Therefore when a fox eats the gull chick - the one you'd named Angela - who'd fallen off your roof before it had fledged and had been hiding out in your front garden and you hear the commotion accompanying the meal, you might think, "Oh, there go the gulls again, with their never-ending tiny melodramas that signify nothing."

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