Every day as sunset draws near the starlings gather. Recently I’ve also noticed that the seagulls are doing so too, in larger and larger flocks. I have begun to wonder why? Is this another remarkable example of interspecies learning? Seagulls are intelligent birds and, in addition to their extraordinary adaptability to take on the diet of the average tourist (sandwiches, hot dogs, chips, cake and buns) I’ve seen them stamping the ground to attract worms in imitation of other birds who have found out how to imitate rain, drawing small invertebrates to the surface. And indeed young fledgling seagulls will poke and peck at anything, seemingly to see how it works. So why shouldn’t they have noticed how starlings gather together every day, and decided to do so too? Ok, they haven’t quite got the hang of close formation, but the results still look pretty spectacular. This has been going for a while now, and I’ve been in poetic rapture at the thought of a new sunset teeming with aerial displays in glorious pan-species exultation.

So much for poetry. I found out today that due to the time of year and it being off-season, sunset is about the time when the seafood stall dumps all its remaining fish bits, guts and mollusc scraps into the sea, to clean out the buckets before closing for the night.