Stale oatcakes and black headed gulls

A couple of weekends ago I went to visit friends on the south coast; on our last day we made up a picnic and headed for Studland bay. We only had a couple of hours and the weather turned a little stormy. However, I’ve always loved the bleakness of a stormy beach and before the rain got too bad we discovered that stale oatcakes are considered a delicacy by black headed gulls.

These small, dainty gulls are beautiful flyers and it diddn’t take long before we had several competing to snatch oatcakes out of the air. I wouldn’t even consider feeding a larger or more aggressive gull such as the herring gull; these birds can become a nuisance in holiday areas where they will attack tourists for their food. This shyer, smaller bird is wary of humans however and we felt quite safe sharing our food with them. It also meant an opportunity to photograph them in flight and close up. Their flight is fast, spectacular and unpredictable; the vast majority of photos from that day show blurred, empty air.

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