Silver gulls in the City of Hobart

Seagulls are not one species but many and they do not necessarily live by the sea. This paper concerns silver gulls, found in Australia. I focus on the way they interact with humans in the urban environment of Hobart, Tasmania, which is often described as ‘last stop before Antarctica’. I use Van Dooren’s idea of ‘storied-places’ to provide new perspectives on and human accountability for seagulls. We found a baby silver gull near the edge of the river that runs through the centre of the city. He was fluffy and spotted and had been dropped by a predator. I tell the story of his survival; how a rookery was moved from an unused railway line; how volunteers conduct the city’s annual gull count; the relationship of silver gulls to food sellers; how a car collided with a large group of gulls sleeping on a road; and how gulls feature in the history and culture of the city. I conclude that the resilient silver gull, like all gulls in the Family Laridae, although often constructed as ‘just a bird’ is much more. They are an integral part of human and nonhuman urban life, a wing on the breeze, a stray feather, a strident call, a visual metaphor, and fragment of a larger space.