Those of you who know something of Australian history will remember "Cook's River". James Cook
sailed into Botany Bay in 1770, spied a modest stream entering the bay and named it after himself.
This is a picture of an Australian silver gull pondering the low tide pickings in that self same
waterway - Cook's River. Difference is that were I to pan upwards we would not see a pristine untouched
environment as Cook had once done. Now there is Sydney International Airport and all the detritis
that only modern man and his works can produce - sigh. Silver gulls turn up in various parts of the
world but nowhere (to my knowledge) do they quite so thoroughly supplant the somewhat larger "sea gull"
as they do along the Australian east coast. They appear to be supremely adaptable and since the advent
of Europeans, it is estimated that their population in this neck of the woods has trebled.