Seagulls Again: Hungry or Lonely?

Befriending one or two seagulls each spring has mixed benefits. We enjoy training them to come when called, and also enjoy their territorial protection of our area from other gulls. However, their presence has produced seagull stains and half-digested crayfish shells on our docks. As a result, we have felt a modicum of regret for the resultant scrubbing, and doubts about our little hobby. Yet, discoveries and surprises have spurred us on throughout this past spring, summer, and fall.

We have seen unusual behaviours, such as a seagull swallowing a small lamprey eel, one seagull feeding another, and seagulls necking to express affection. We have heard seagull sounds, such as clucking, which we never expected. But we have only recently come to probe the nature of our relationship with these beautiful, graceful, favoured birds, which have shown a decline in numbers in the Thousand Islands.

It was a mature gull, all white around its head, who first came over for some morsels of bread early last May. Shy at first, this gull soon warmed to my presence, and then to JBJ, my partner and dear friend. I named it Hortense, although I thought of it as a male gull. The prefix means ‘outside’ in French, and its tension around us diminished in a few weeks. Hortense chased off other gulls interested in our feedings, until one day, a couple of weeks later, he let down his guard for another mature but timid and dainty gull. To us, she was “Flower Child,” since she would routinely fly over and land next to a pot of geraniums on our dock. For over a week, the two of them were always together nearby.

As we had seen in the past, the couple disappeared during most of late May and June, although there were occasional reappearances. Periodically, one of the pair would return and enjoy some feedings, leave, and then be followed by a visit from the other one. We think that Hortense and Flower Child had a nest somewhere, not far away. We did not see them at all after late June.

At one point in early July, two new gulls became regulars. One was mature, all white around his head, who we named Striper. The other was immature, mottled in appearance, small, and peeped constantly, making high-pitched little sounds unlike any other immature gulls we had seen. At first, I refused to feed him, deterred by the thought of more gulls messing on our docks. But then, in a moment of weakness, I threw Striper a morsel of bread. Instead of swallowing it, he held it out for the baby, who took it but did not stop peeping! The little one was Junior to us, and it stayed around for another four months!

Before we vacated our place on the island for a few weeks during the summer, we resolved to try to break our gulls of their habit of gorging on our gifts. We had seen them catch crayfish, and, by early August, knew that Junior was quite capable of supporting himself. We stopped feeding the gulls then, and noted the results.
They continued to hang around, and still spent time on our docks, causing us considerable work scrubbing off the tiny, pink, granular, crushed crayfish shells. We felt sad to be refusing favours to our friends!

When we returned, after Labour Day, we did not see any of the mature gulls spending time on the rocks some forty meters off of our docks. But we did see Junior, still peeping lightly as before, and called him over for a feed. He came, and we felt such happiness to be recognized by him!

Soon, Junior had brought an older friend, Zipper, a non-breeding gull of over a year old, who always deferred to Junior, and who we could only feed by separating the two. We were so thrilled at Junior’s return that we resolved to feed them better treats, and began buying packages of hot dogs that we cut into pieces that were easily thrown to each gull individually.

These two gulls stayed with us until late November, enjoying the dogs and other table scraps that we fed them.

It was early on my last morning on the island, on November 20th, when I was cleaning out my refrigerator, that I was unexpectedly hit by a revelation of a transcendental sort.

I was putting out leftover bread, vegetables, hot dog hunks, and bits of rice and long-frozen meat on the dock for any hungry scavengers such as the seagulls or even the crows. Soon, the space on the docks and the rocks were littered with morsels of all kinds. I expected an invasion of avians. But they did not come!

Then, I could see Junior and Zipper flying around above the dock and the rocks, but not landing for the smorgasbord. After surveying the scene, they flew about eighty meters off, and landed on one of the shoals that was now out of water. Then, they just stood there.

I was puzzled by their hesitancy, which did not seem to match the eagerness with which they had, for months now, gone after every scrap that we had offered them. Why the reluctance?

I formed an hypothesis in a corner of my busy brain, but did not resolve to test it. It was the thought that perhaps they were as overwhelmed and disgusted by a massive presentation of too much food as are both JBJ and I under parallel circumstances. I continued my busy jobs, putting the final touches on closing the place for the winter, without much thought of our feathered, bipedal, ring-billed, seagull friends. At one point, walking up and toward the front door to our cottage, I noticed that the gulls were staying out on a rock and still showing no interest in the food that I had put out for them. A new hypothesis formed suddenly in my hapless head, and with it, the resolve to test it right on the spot!

I grabbed a hot dog and a knife, and walked out onto the high rocks from which I had fed them so many times. At once, without my even calling to them, the two took flight and came to the water below, awaiting the falling of manna from the heavens! It did, in fact, come down, and they were excited to pursue each morsel, appearing as full of enthusiasm as ever! They proceeded to pay no attention to the embarrassment of riches that we had thrown out on the dock and the rocks.
My hypothesis was confirmed: Our seagull friends were not coming to us simply to eat, but rather, to be fed. It was our activity that was actually central to the desires of these seagulls. They sought to have us interact with them. And then I recalled other clues to this insight!

It commonly happened that, when JBJ and I returned from town, or from another island, these two birds would take off from wherever they were, nearby, and fly over us, and sometimes land on the water near our boat as we came slowly to the dock!

We had interpreted them as wanting to be fed. But now, our eyes opened to their desire for more than just food. Rather, they wanted us to engage in the activity of feeding them!

In fact, we almost never fed them from our boat! Despite that fact, they repeatedly flew in to greet us when we arrived back on the island. The lack of positive reinforcement seemed not to dampen their hopes.

I recalled times when we had looked through our binoculars to see the particulars of gull behavior on a rock, and discovered one of them eating a crayfish. Then, one of us had gone out on the high rock, and called the gull, who had come over straight away for some morsels of bread or hot dog, despite having just eaten a crayfish, and being, presumably, stuffed with food! Clearly, the gull’s desire was for us to attend to it, to relate to it in a way that it understood and liked.

Now, I knew that it was not simply the food that these birds valued. That the food was a stimulus is not in doubt. But now, I had a glimpse of a dimension of their simple minds that had been formerly unimaginable. I could see that they were attracted to us feeding them, not simply to the food! I could see that we truly had a relationship with our two seagull friends, and they with us. They actually value our company, not unlike the way that we value theirs. This illumination, after years of feeding these birds, had hit me like a shaft of light! Telling other people that these birds are our friends now took on a richer meaning, beyond hyperbole or tongue-in-cheek sarcasm.

It was in fact my last day on the island until the next spring, and I knew that the gulls face a difficult challenge to survive a northern winter. I am, of course, quite unsure of where they will go, or how they will find the food they need.

Come what may, JBJ and I will be looking for them when we return. And if they return, as well, which happened once before to us, we may know them not by their markings, but by their behavior toward us. And now, we will know that they are attracted to us not only by the food we offer them, but also by some sort of primordial need that they have, and we have, to make friends with characters of another species!

By Raymond S. Pfeiffer, The Punts, Lake Fleet

Raymond Pfeiffer, an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, relishes his time on The Punts Islands with his dear friend, Judith Bedford-Jones, alias JBJ. She is a retired nurse and lawyer, living in Ottawa and on her family island, Mudlunta. He has a doctorate in philosophy from Washington University and is professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, from Delta College in Michigan. He is the author of philosophy books and articles, and enjoys writing for Thousand Islands Life. They have become friends with several generations of seagulls on The Punts Islands in The Lake Fleet.

Editor's Note: This is the third article about seagulls on The Punts Islands in the Lake Fleet. The first, "Alternative Personalities," was published in March, 2023; the second, “Duped: We thought We Knew Seagulls,” in February, 2024.