- White Wings

 Thursday January 13

Although we come across singles throughout the year, visiting the beach behind the Sealife Centre in Yarmouth is a January tradition. It was a lovely sunny day with hardly any wind. Bag of home made seeded bread pieces at the ready, we pulled up at an open area from which we could see the beach. Sure enough, there were about ten Mediterranean Gulls huddled down in small groups, mixed in with Black-headed and Herring Gulls.I often wonder why they choose this particular spot in the winter. One bird had the speckled head of approaching summer plumage.

The others were all in winter piratical head garb.

 One gull had a leg ring which I found readable on my photograph.

Returning home via Martham and the coast road, Pam saw a Great Egret in a West Somerton roadside field. We sat looking at it for at least five minutes, waiting for it to move into a better position. We then indulged in all sorts of non ethical persuasions, such as whistling and hand clapping. No reponse at all, not even a flicker. We were beginning to think that it was a plastic bird when it turned the other way, freezing again.

 

We left it there. I really wanted it to fly, but once it had proved that it was not plastic, it seemed very wrong to offer more persuasion.

Thanks to David B, I know that the helicopter photograph in my last entry is that of a Chinook. A transport helicopter in use by the military and others since the 1960s. A reliable workhorse still going strong. Still vaguely menacing, but not as much as the Bell Huey used in Apocalypse Now, the film version of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, which was a set book in a degree course I completed. The book was set in 19C Congo. Coppola's film, starring Marlon Brando and Martin Sheen, was set in Vietnam. The film did not bear much resemblance to the book, I remember it for the awesome helicopter shots. It was nominated for 14 Oscars and won 2.