Peggy the Seagull

Last year my wife and I were throwing some leftovers to the seagulls. Competition among the gulls to get at the chow can be pretty intense.

It was then that I happened to notice a seagull with a strange leg watching us in the distance. Its one foot was deformed and its leg stuck out at an odd angle.

I pointed the seagull out to my wife and she immediately felt sorry for it. She tossed a piece of food to it and the bird made an attempt to hobble over to it but the other seagulls swooped in and stole it.

A few days later the gull with the strange leg showed up again. By now I had named it Pegleg. My wife thought that was inappropriate and christened her Peggy.

So now all our choicest leftovers are set aside for Peg. Well throw something large like a chicken carcass to the rest of the gulls and during the melee Peg will hop over to us and scoff down what we brought her.

She has figured out some feeding strategies on her own. While the other seagulls go into the water to bath after eating Peg will wait for us by the exit to the beach for a quick nosh as we are leaving.

This past month we hadn't seen Peg for a few weeks and I began to think something had happened to her. Sunday my wife and I were a few blocks away from the beach when I noticed a gull flying high in the opposite direction.

I couldn't be certain but I thought its leg stuck out like Pegs. So as I'm looking up the gull does a quick turn around and circles over our head. Here I am deciding if its the gull I think it is and the gull is circling lower cocking its head doing the same exact thing.

Then I realized we were wearing different coats and hats then we usually wear when we walk the beach and Peg wasn't sure at first that it was us.

When you take in too account all the other people strolling around us its pretty amazing that a gull can pick out two humans by facial features alone!

Peggy will be happy to learn I have some leftover baked salmon with her name on it.

Sea Serpent Sculpture Sold!

I had two pleasant surprises yesterday. The first was the sale of a piece of my horror themed art.

It was the sea serpent sculpture that was inspired by the brontosaurus upsetting the raft full of sailors in King Kong (1933).

The second surprise came after I had fed the seagulls. Each morning the gull we nicknamed Wally shows up on the beach near our home.

My wife and I started to feed Wally when we noticed he was hobbled by fishing line ensnaring his legs.

Eventually he somehow freed himself but now each morning when I check out the surf conditions for fishing Wally expects his free lunch.

Yesterday was the end of the striped bass fishing season. Each year I make a point of fishing the last day. Well the freezing temperature combined with the gusty northwest wind put any idea of fishing out of my mind.

I thought since I'm here I may as well tough it out and walk a few beaches. After three blocks my eyes were tearing badly from the constant wind. I turned my back to the wind to get a moment of relief. As I turned to continue on this lure washed up literally at my feet!

The weird thing is I wanted this lure but I had put off buying it till after the holidays.

Horror of horrors!

I ran out of Apoxie clay in the middle of a horror figure I'm sculpting. A sculptor without clay is a sad sight. A sculptor that fishes without clay and who is unable to fish is an even sadder sight. I'm watching out for the UPS man today and hoping my clay order arrives!

The ocean has been kicking up something awful the last week. This photo gives you an idea of the size of the wave compared to the surfer. Also notice the surge of water pushing back seaward in the left of the picture. It is colliding with the incoming water and erupting straight up.

There was also water flooding over the rock jetty to my left adding to the washing machine action of the water. I scratched fishing for another day and decided to snap some pictures of my feathered friend Wally.

He ( or she ) is a black backed seagull. My wife named him Wally after we came across him one afternoon with his legs tangled in braided fishing line. He could just barely stand.

She took to feeding him daily which was hard because even small seagulls were able to dominate him and steal his food. As I came to know him I realized besides being ensnared he was also blind in one eye.

Some how over the weeks the line came free. Then Wally went through his limping phase for about a week till he regained full use of his legs.

Now he is a living terror!

Blackback seagulls are aggressive by nature but Wally has raised it to an art form.

He savages any seagull that even comes near him on the beach. And forget it if he sees one of his own species! Sometimes he'll chase them 1/4 mile down the beach before circling back.

I'm thinking someone threw something at Wally to blind his eye. The reason I say that is if he sees you holding anything large he wigs out.

The picture of him lifting off is right after he spied the camera. Otherwise he is fairly trusting of me. Even walking alongside me when I go to the waters edge to check on conditions.

A Lazy Weekend

I had planned to fish the outgoing tide Saturday and Sunday morning but things didn't work out. The new moon brought strong sweeps which I'd counted on. The stronger than usual current actually makes some fishing lures work better.

What I hadn't expected was tons of seaweed!It would have made fishing next to impossible. The surfers weren't bothered by the seaweed and seemed to be having a ball surfing the seven foot waves off Long Beach.

Instead my wife and I decided to take a beach walk and throw some stale bread to the birds.

These are mostly Ringed-bill gulls. They are pretty good at snatching the bread in the air but would come in second best to a fly off with a Laughing gull. Lucky for these little beggars no Laughing gulls were in sight.

I like how three seagulls are honing in on the piece of bread in the picture above!

When we got home I decided to paint some work I had started ages ago. I primed a fisherman and cod fish I had sculpted and got some painting done.

I have a wooden boat I built that the fisherman will be sitting in. The stick in the cod fish serves as a handle for painting.When it is all together it will show the fisherman unhooking the cod.