The Gull Next Door by Marianne Taylor

The Gull Next Door: A Portrait of a Misunderstood Bird
By Marianne Taylor
Princeton University Press, 2020

Natural history writer Marianne Taylor is a wonderfully inviting writer, perfectly working generous elements of her own autobiography into her work in ways that give a confessional sense of honesty. And yet, for all that honesty, the subtitle of her new book The Gull Next Door: A Portrait of a Misunderstood Bird is clearly an intentional fib. The birds Taylor writes about so glowingly in these pages are - as Taylor’s own accounts make abundantly clear - quite well understood. When humans characterize gulls as noisy, pushy, messy, opportunistic, and argumentative, those humans are being very accurate. Taylor acknowledges this. She doesn’t really want gulls to be better understood; she wants them to be better loved.

Taylor grew up in a seaside town and paints a vivid portrait of what it’s like to have the endless raucous hubbub of herring gulls firmly imprinted in your DNA. She reports having been fascinated by herring gulls since early childhood (plenty of other gull species get attention in these pages, but it’s the herring gull that’s clearly captured our author’s heart, God help her), and the keenness of her observations makes it less and less possible to prettify the picture of what these birds are like. They drop baby birds onto rocks from great heights in order to pulverize them into more convenient meals. They use bits of bread to lure adult pigeons within striking range and then rip them apart while aghast tourists watch. They defecate like it was a national pastime. Taylor knows all this:

The birds’ crimes include (but are not limited to): crapping copiously over cars and garden furniture; tearing up bin bags and strewing the contents across the streets; attacking people (and pets) that go near their nests; stealing unattended food; keeping everyone awake with their all-night screaming parties; and being very big and alarming, which frightens the children.

Just think: if that’s what a friend says about gulls, you can imagine what their enemies think. Those enemies include fishermen, of course, but also waterfront business owners and a great many vacationers who shell out money for a Fisherman’s Platter at Jack’s Snack Shack, set it on the outdoor table, turn away for just one second to attend to little Schuyler’s mental wellbeing, and turn back to find a bulldog-sized seagull right there on the table, gulping down the last of the batter-fried shrimp. Little wonder that there are regular calls for what Taylor archly terms “the seagull menace” to be eradicated.

There’s small chance of it in practical terms, partly because most gulls are intensely itinerant creatures, often living far from where you see them and almost always just passing through, but mainly because most gulls have mastered the dubious art of living with humans. They clean up all kinds of garbage (indeed, gull-watching at local dumps and landfills is a popular if sordid birding hobby, as chronicled last year in Tim Dee’s wonderful book Landfill), they know their way around cities, and they’ve developed the ability to live alongside humans. 

Taylor hints that this might increase the danger to gulls:

We humans notice when other animals live in our space and use resources that we want for ourselves, or even when they just use the stuff that accumulates around us that we don’t really need. Our species has an inglorious history when it comes to sharing our lives with other animals. If those animals make themselves noticed, even just a little, we don’t like it, and we punish those animals without mercy.

But there’s an equally persuasive case to be made that this is the thing that will save gulls. Animals species of all kinds that have learned to live with humans - from pigeons to coyotes to foxes to storks to house sparrows to mice and beyond - are flying close to the flame of humanity’s genocidal nature, yes, but they’re also sheltering in the shadow of the world’s greatest killer. Better, many naturalists would say, to be a dingy little fox at the bottom of the garden than to be a majestic wolf at the top of every trophy-hunter’s list. 

Either way, it seems likely that gulls are here to stay, permanent squawky fixtures not only at every seaside location on Earth but also practically everywhere inland. The Gull Next Door is a cheeringly heartfelt love letter to these ubiquitous creatures. Other gull aficionados will very much appreciate it. The gulls themselves? First they’d poop on it, and then they’d steal the author’s chips. There’s just no helping some people.

—Steve Donoghue is a founding editor of Open Letters Monthly. His book criticism has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The American Conservative. He writes regularly for The National, The Vineyard Gazette, and The Christian Science Monitor. His website is http://www.stevedonoghue.com.