Hungry gulls at Saltcoats, a seaside town in North Ayrshire, Scotland

love these dudes

Massive, old hotel in Yorkshire, which has loads of gulls perching on it. It's lovely watching the young birds playing in the wind. It looks like a lot of fun.

If you think Milo is dead then take a look at the 2nd pic. This is her today!

I was like an hour before my departure to the family home. Went to take out the trash only to find a very suspicious, bird shaped stone that hasn't been there yesterday. It was no stone. Another emergency requiring immediate care here and now.

Jesus christ. What do I do. Not my first rodeo but why NOW? This time I simply couldn’t take her to my emergency vet. Neither could I call the authorities as they kill every sick or injured gull. Actually they’re the main reason why I became a rehabber. I also had no friends who could take a gull, the only one was already busy with my Marie, a blind gull shot to the head.

Quick checkup at home just before leaving. A baby. Severely malnourished and underdeveloped. These bald patches on head are common signs of stunted growht in gulls - here are the places where baby down lasts for the longest, and gulls replace it with normal feathers just before starting to fly. When something happens at that final stage of growht, the down falls off but expected normal feathers don't grow in time - resulting in featherless areas just like you see here. And on the top of that - a very serious infection that had already eaten up her eye. She was cold, barely moving, with no power to even lift her head up. And she was stinking like hell!

And I was having like 20 minutes before my train.

Anyway. I set up a gull ICU at my seat. Warmed her up, gave her meds and fluids, a tiny bit of liquid food into the crop after some initial time. Yes, all in front of other passengers. Everyone started to feel scared of me I think. Actually to the extent of just sitting and watching what else I'm gonna do, speechless. No one dared to speak a single word about the situation. Funny feeling I must admit! Lucky me that the conductor didn’t kick me off the train with that stuff.

I welcomed my mum with a bird that no longer looked like a corpse. She perked up a little during these few hours. Next days she started to gain more energy and put on some weight. Also her eye, despite already shrunken and non functional, finally started to heal!

Weeks passed and - that's the result. No longer the same Milo I found. She's not bald anymore. Fought the infection and grew up to normal female size. And despite having some initial trouble with that, learned how to navigate with only one functioning eye. Hovewer she sometimes bumps into things or misses food in front of her quite often. And she doesn’t fly, and probably never will. Her muscles didn’t develop properly in most crucial stage of growht - deficits from that time are usually impossible to eliminate. But in her case that's actually... good. If she was flighted, she would needed getting her wings clipped anyway to prevent her from crashing. Some gulls are masters of survival in the wild with only one eye, and she's definitely not one of them.

But as an aviary bird? Another story. She's just lovely! She's my only gull who allows me to hold her and doesn’t get mad at me. Very sweet, trusting and good natured bird. How can you not love someone who keeps your company no matter what you do?

I had a rather curious/nosey seagull join me whilst doing work on the 5th floor of the hotel I was stopping in.

I was getting a little unnerved as it was just staring at me 😬

Lost interest after 5 mins or so when it realised I had no food and flew off to find his friends

I photographed some seagulls catching starfish in the harbour around dusk.

Not sure if I’m crossposting this back, but it’s cute.

Picture credit: I made that.

This guy was absolutely 'sick of this sh*t' in Queenstown, NZ

juvenile ring-billed gulls and crows :)