it looked like a scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 horror movie “The Birds” yesterday morning in Naskeag Harbor:
However, Scott Keenan wasn’t being attacked by those Herring Gulls. He apparently was doing some cleaning on his scalloping vessel and tossing tasty bits overboard for the opportunistic scavengers.
A Leighton Archive close-up of a Herring Gull is shown below:
Leighton Archive Image
After eating, Herring Gulls and many other sea birds will drink fresh water if they can find it. (There’s a pond near the Harbor that’s a popular gull hangout.) However, if the ponds are iced-in or the birds otherwise can’t find fresh water, they’ll drink the salty sea water. The gulls apparently have filter glands in their heads that allow them to excrete excess salt out of their nostrils.
Finally, just for classic film fans: “The Birds,” filmed in California’s Bodega Bay area, reportedly was declared to be “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” by the U.S. Library of Congress in 2016 and preserved in the National Film Registry. For me, it’s too scary to see a second time. (Vessel images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on December 14, 2022.)