Paper short abstract:

In this paper I follow the lives of gulls as they move and intersect with our own, exploring the uneasy taskscapes that emerge in cities that are also inhabited by gulls.

Paper long abstract:

Gulls are a group of birds whose lives habitually traverse landscapes. They make their homes on the coast and in marshes but also increasingly in cities. Physiologically they are well adapted for mobile lives, attending to the ebb and flow of the tides or the rise and fall of floodwaters in order to subsist. More recently those rhythms have been added to by the current of refuse to dumps, of fishing boats into harbours, of rain onto playing fields and of consumers discarding their half-eaten snacks. Gulls have followed humans from the country to the city and from the marshes, fields and coasts to the rooftops and pavements.

This paper explores the lives of gulls as they move and intersect with our own and the more-than-human taskscapes that emerge from this uneasy entanglement. These taskscapes include the various 'mitigation strategies' that have been developed as people struggle to adapt to their loud larid neighbours. I speculate on how people and gulls might learn to live more amicably together in these shared urban spaces. More broadly, I consider the doing of the city as something that is never wholly human and how the activities of other urban beings create tensions but also a need for tolerance.