gull portrait

7.10.16.3119
7.10.16 ~ my gull friend

You do not ask a tame seagull why it needs to disappear from time to time toward the open sea. It goes, that’s all, and it is as simple as a ray of sunshine, as normal as the blue of the sky.
~ Bernard Moitessier
(The Long Way)

Now that our son and daughter-in-law have returned home to Georgia our house is so very quiet… Yesterday for lunch we went to the beach. The weather was cool and damp and there were very few people there. I wasn’t the only one wearing a sweatshirt. At first we didn’t see our friendly gull.

7.10.16.3047
7.10.16 ~ there was a crow raising quite a ruckus, all by himself,
leaving us wondering what all the fuss was about
7.10.16.3051
7.10.16 ~ a mother Canada goose swam by with two children
7.10.16.3089
7.10.16 ~ gull monitoring Long Island Sound from the rooftop

Disappointed that we hadn’t seen our friend, we started to walk back to our car and then we saw him, standing on the sidewalk, almost as if he was waiting for us. He was quiet – no vocalizations this day.

7.10.16.3094

So I got down on the grass and talked to him for a while. He sat down and allowed me to get closer than ever before. This time I had my camera!

7.10.16.3116

After getting the picture above I pressed my luck and got the portrait at the top of this post. What a thrill! Somehow he knows we can be trusted. But again, he seems old and tired. I wonder if we will ever see him standing on one of the white posts this summer. Maybe those days are over. We’ll see…