No kidding! A month ago I was with a client at Middle Head in Sydney (where the
old army barracks have been turned into offices), when I scored a wing in my
right ear-hole, and a beak-sized hole in my roast chicken roll. My client
wasn't so lucky - 5 minutes later the kookaburra took 2 thirds of his roll out
of his hands and scattered it half-way down the hill...
-----Original Message-----
From: Birding-Aus On Behalf Of
brian fleming
Sent: Sunday, 2 August 2015 10:58 AM
To: Dave Torr;
Subject: The dangers of (British) gulls..
Perhaps we should introduce a sport called Kookaburra-running, for picnic
grounds and camping areas? See how far you can get with a chop-bone?
Anthea Fleming
On 2/08/2015 8:48 AM, Dave Torr wrote:
> From the "World Wide Words" newsletter:
>
> Reports in British newspapers these past few days have featured the
> menace from seagulls, particularly in Cornwall. Earlier this month a
> dog was killed
> <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-33534181>
> by a seagull in that county and a tortoise died
> <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-33547126> after being
> flipped over and pecked to death. The birds are brazen in grabbing
> food from visitors and in doing so have caused injuries. Young people
> have taken advantage by inventing a game called *gull running*. It’s
> said to have started in Whitby but has since spread to other seaside
> towns. One person holds food above their head — usually fish and chips
> — and runs a set course. The winner is whoever can run the furthest
> without a seagull grabbing the food.
>
> One correspondent to my newspaper was less concerned about the
> physical injuries the birds can cause than about the purity of
> language. There are no such things as seagulls, he argued. In the UK
> there are herring, great black-backed, lesser black-backed,
> black-headed and common gulls and the kittiwake, but something called
> a seagull doesn’t exist. A touch pedantic, perhaps? We may be sure it
> won’t change his view to be told that English has had *seagull* as a popular
> collective term since medieval times.
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