The dangers of (British) gulls..

From the “World Wide Words” newsletter: Reports in British newspapers these past few days have featured the menace from seagulls, particularly in Cornwall. Earlier this month a dog was killed by a seagull in that county and a tortoise died after being flipped over and pecked to death. The birds are brazen in grabbing food from visitors and in doing so have caused injuries. Young people have taken advantage by inventing a game called *gull running*. It’s said to have started in Whitby but has since spread to other seaside towns. One person holds food above their head — usually fish and chips — and runs a set course. The winner is whoever can run the furthest without a seagull grabbing the food. One correspondent to my newspaper was less concerned about the physical injuries the birds can cause than about the purity of language. There are no such things as seagulls, he argued. In the UK there are herring, great black-backed, lesser black-backed, black-headed and common gulls and the kittiwake, but something called a seagull doesn’t exist. A touch pedantic, perhaps? We may be sure it won’t change his view to be told that English has had *seagull* as a popular collective term since medieval times.


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