Me: Listen to the seagulls.
Colleague: Yes, they are very excitable today.
Me: Imagine, before this building was here, centuries ago when the Vikings were here, even before that when there was no Dublin at all, the same seagulls were screeching around the sky on this very site.
Colleague: Well, hardly the same seagulls.
Me: OK, not exactly the same seagulls…
I was interested to learn recently (from The Secret Life of Birds, by Colin Tudge) that black-headed gulls and herring gulls are opposite ends of a series of species ringing the Arctic in which each neighbouring species can interbreed.
They weren’t. Seagulls like cities because we build them nice heated cliffs to nest on… That cold wet bog Dublin was built on wouldn’t have been half so appealing.
A good point Sarah but another romantic illusion shattered! Not that I find seagulls all that romantic in any case.
Dot, that it is a lot of information about birds.
Sarah, you’re ruining it for me, C, ok not maybe very romantic.