Herring Gulls.

This pair of birds have been visiting us each day for breakfast since the Big Garden Bird Watch. As individuals, there is nothing to make either recognisable, there are many regulars that are look-a-likes, but as a couple they are conspicuously inseparable. This will change when they go through the spring moult and the last vestiges of juvenile plumage disappear and they return to anonymity. We did wonder what their relationship was: siblings or parent and child perhaps? We’ve done a little research (read a page of Wikipedia) and the most likely explanation is that they are young lovers preparing to set up home together.

The larger of the two will be four this year, you can tell from the plumage, and so will be coming of age; the smaller one is older but, once they are four years old it they become difficult to age (the only method of which I am aware is to do a DNA test and measure the length of the telomeres; they’re the bits at the end of the chromosomes that shorten with each cell division).

I heard the other day, at the music group, that ladies were normally well into their first pregnancy by the time they married, there was no point in either party going through with the ceremony if either was incapable of procreating. Similarly, it seems that successfully breeding gulls tend to be monogamous while failure results in both parties re-casting their nets.
Now where did I put the confetti.

A bit belatedly, I had only just posted yesterday's, "Picture Frame."