You'll never find a post here on rats or bedbugs (or probably not) but as promised here's your look at seagulls, directly following in the tradition of our unbiased admiration of other dissed creatures like squirrels and pigeons.
There are actually over forty different species of gull in the world. Most of those you'll see in these parts will be Herring Gulls or Ring-Billed Gulls. I've also heard of Iceland Gulls being spotted around the city and I've personally seen a Bonaparte's Gull and got a great picture of it too...but it wasn't in Toronto so I'm legally forbidden from showing it to you. The wide variety of seagull 'styles' you see is mostly a result of changes in their plumage at different times of the year and at different ages.
Besides strawberries and garbage they do actually hunt and catch fish and other aquatic life as you can see.
In the nineteenth century seagulls were almost hunted to extinction because their feathers were used in women's hats. This makes their wide presence now kind of inspiring. The fact that they're everywhere is also useful if you want to learn how to shoot birds in flight. Which is the real method to my madness of bringing them up.
It takes a lot of practice to do anything well, and shooting birds in flight is no exception, even with modern autofocus. So if you have a DSLR and a reasonably long lens, go out to a spot that has seagulls around. Heck even a parking lot will do. You'll always be able to find these birds so you won't have any excuse for not getting your practice in, and the other advantage is that light-coloured stuff (at least by my observation) gets nailed more easily by autofocus than anything dark. Just another little factor to make your practice easier. If people think you're nuts for taking pictures of seagulls in a parking let, well, just ignore them.
If you practice enough you'll be in good shape when you're out someplace and spot something really cool like an eagle or owl, and that means you'll have that much less chance of missing that once-in-a-lifetime shot. Believe me, that happens all too often.
And on a closing note, honestly, if you were in the Amazonian rainforest or Tahiti and you saw a bird like this and didn't know what it was called, wouldn't you think it was stunning? Yes, you would.
To enlarge any of these just click on them.
