I went for a walk just before sunset today: a perfect spring evening, blue sky with a few clouds moving in, scent of lilacs in the air, the trees covered with new leaves.<\/p>\n
Partway across the bridge to Pope’s Island there was a juvenile gull on the sidewalk. I thought it must be freshly dead because its eyes had been picked out yet; but then it moved its head slightly when I walked past it. Juvenile gulls are hard to identify, but I’d guess this was a first-year Greater Black-backed Gull.<\/p>\n
It was still there when I walked back home. Again, it barely moved its head, cringing slightly, when I walked past. It must be in poor health if it sits on the edge of a sidewalk along a well-traveled four-lane road, and doesn’t even get up to walk away when a human approaches it. They say eighty percent of gulls die within a year of being born, and I’d say that gull was right on track for being part of that eighty percent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I went for a walk just before sunset today: a perfect spring evening, blue sky with a few clouds moving in, scent of lilacs in the air, the trees covered with new leaves. Partway across the bridge to Pope’s Island there was a juvenile gull on the sidewalk. I thought it must be freshly dead […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberal-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3451"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3456,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3451\/revisions\/3456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}