He’s the resident seagull at Visit Fylde Coast. Cheeky and full of personality, here’s a day in the life of Homer, in his own words.
Start to a Day in the Life of Homer…
I get up when the day starts to dawn. It doesn’t matter what time of year it is, as soon as I see a drop of daylight I’m off. Those pesky streetlights can be a bit confusing though, because it’s not really dark at night around here. I often start flying about when birds in darker places would still be snoozing.
My first job every day is to go and pay a call at Their House. Some days they pay attention and can be very good at answering my demands. Others they just leave me to sit waiting. I don’t know why they don’t all get up when it cracks daylight, although the younger one seems to be up and about early on. I can tell because in winter their lights are already on when I show my face.
They’ve built me a really handy landing platform, where I can get a really good view inside their house. The garage roof next door is a nice flat space and it gets nice and warm to the feet. I can land there, and sunbathe in peace when the sun shines on a nice day. I often sit and watch them from up there, pottering about in the garden.
It pays to keep a good eye on what they’re doing because I can often charm them into an extra bit of food. I walk along the top of the fence in the back garden. But I can’t quite reach the window to bang on it and summon them. I know that’s where they keep my food because I’ve seen them fetching it out of the cupboard. I like that cupboard.
Come on hurry up!
If they don’t come and feed me when my stomach is rumbling I just tell them to knock about. They must like me because a few years ago they made one of the windows bigger so that I could reach it to tap on it with my beak. Now, all I need to do is sit there on the path and bang on the glass. That usually does the trick.
In fact I’ve got a perch to watch them wherever they are in the house. I’ve even been known to bang on the back door when service has been slow!
I’ve had a bit of competition this winter for my food. The wife’s been as bold as brass this summer. I let her know who’s the boss though, and give her a peck when she gets too big for her boots. I’ll let her have a bit of food because she has my babies every year so I need her to be fit and strong.
I have to say I think the rest of the gulls around here are a bit dim. They watch me with my open-all-hours café. But they haven’t got the sense to go and find their own house to take control of. Well that’s all of them except a nearby pair who’ve also got their own people. I’d have thought it would have caught on more by now.
Bringing up the Kids
It’s been a Godsend I can tell you, just being able to drop in for a meal. Especially when you’ve got kids to feed. They end up bigger than me, we’ve bred some right strapping kids between us over the years. In return for never ending snap we keep all the other gulls out of their garden – it’s OURS!
One good thing about our kids is that when they start to be a pain we can shoo them off. I can’t be doing with having loads of kids hanging around me. It’s like when they start getting bored, they throw stuff all over the place. Those who feed us have usually got things in the garden that the babies enjoy. Like plants in pots and that scrubbing thing they use to wash our water dish out with.
Our year starts in early spring with me sussing out our house. If the chimney pot seems to have stood the weather well over winter without too much damage we’ll start thinking about dragging stuff off the beach and re-building the bedroom.
She likes a nice soft bed to have her babies in. It’s a question of lodging it safely between the chimney pots. Although February can be a lovely month with still weather, you can bet your bottom dollar that as soon as we start with the babies it will blow a gale. It’s disheartening when your family gets blown to smithereens. The neighbours had their babies on a flat roof and two of them still perished in a storm. They weren’t even blown onto the floor.
They’re a big help, all the folk who feed us. When the chicks hatch, they eat us out of house and home. We’ve managed to rear two most years. Sometimes the silly things fall off the chimney pot. Once they’ve done that we just don’t bother to feed them. Well if they can’t keep their footing what’s a parent supposed to do, you can’t go running about after them can you.
Later on in a Day in the Life of Homer…
There are two or three people nearby who are daft enough to give us as much food as we want. So we sit on our pot watching for them to come in and out of their houses, then we quickly fly down and stare at them in a pretty ‘feed me’ kind of way. They all do, it’s just a matter of perfecting the right look.
We gulp as much down as we can carry and then take it back to Chimney Pot Towers and sick it up for the kids. It’s a much easier way of feeding them, I’m surprised that hasn’t caught on. I’ve seen the two legged people with bags so that must be how they carry their food about. From our chimney we can see when they come home. As soon as they come down the drive we just fly down to greet them. If we stand on the path at the back of the car and look cute we can almost always bag a free meal.
The only trouble is, the one who is easiest to cadge a meal from keeps taking photos of us. She hasn’t asked permission or had a model release form signed, and she certainly hasn’t consulted with our agent. I don’t know what she thinks she’s playing at, at this rate we’ll be all over emails and websites and as famous as Kate Moss before much longer!
Other posts you might be interested in:
- A Day in the life of Homer
- Andy and seafaring sayings
- Bobby Ball – in memory
- Cliff and his Fylde Coast wildlife
- John Barnett – High Sherriff of Lancashire
- Michelle Harris and Brian Hughes – Local History Authors
- Peter’s Make Music Live – Busk 2018
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