Gulls, Obsession, and Trash in a Human-altered World

A review by Amar Ayyash

Landfill: Notes on Gull Watching and Trash Picking in the Anthropocene by Tim Dee

Chelsea Green Publishing, 2018

239 pages, hardcover

ABA Sales / Buteo Books 15007

In this unique nature monograph, Tim Dee tackles a topic no author has before: How gulls—something of the once-wild—came to share our present world. Partly due to the Clean Air Act in the 1950s and partly due to our wasteful habits, gulls have gained admission into our most beautiful and most foul places alike. They’re now caught in a modern conundrum where many populations earn a living directly off of people, and for this, they’re regarded as an invasive nuisance. “They have become in-between birds in an in-between world,” as Dee writes.

Dee maintains that this family of birds is revelatory on several levels, acting as environmental bio-indicators of the earth’s rapidly changing climate. The gulls are both “futuristic” as they roam our city streets like drone ops, but still “ancient” with their menacing dinosaur-stares. They love our asbestos rooftops where there are few predators. The consequences of the organic matter they consume in our landfills are still unknown, but one example of this is the feminization of embryos noted in the 1980s due to DDT exposure.

Taking us through a journey of landfill visits with some of Europe’s most prominent gull-watchers, the book unfolds in southern Britain, and it is here that the author experiences the subculture of gull obsession, taking part in capturing and banding gulls. The eloquence in describing these visits is captivating, and the imagery is mesmerizing (you can almost smell the waste through the pages). The book provides an education on how the shift from metal rings (leg bands) to color rings (field readable plastic bands) has provided a wealth of new information about the whereabouts of Europe’s gulls, seemingly overnight.

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