At Christmas there was turkey, of course; there was goose, and some people went for pheasants. Not ruling out chickens and ducks. And for some time the game season has been on and snipe, mallard, woodcock fall to the guns. Naturalists of the last century were much given to eating the oddest creatures - for purely scientific reasons, of course. But seagulls no; though puffins have been on the menu with many around these islands and in Iceland. Anyway, our roving friend Arthur Reynolds came across a new one some years ago: your plain, ordinary seagull. He was spending a few days in Skagen, which he describes as a 400-vessel fishing port in north Denmark. He was noting differences of procedure - thus, he observed, the fishermen pack their plaice white side up in boxes, so that, he says, any sunshine would not warm the fish so much. In Britain, he tells us, and Ireland, it is always white side downwards.
Anyway, he got a surprise when, on the third day there, he saw a seagull and suddenly realised that it was the first one he had seen during all his daily wanderings in the port, noticing vessel features. Irish ports always have hundreds, "because, unlike in Denmark, fish and fish scraps are left lying around". That evening he remarked to a friend that he'd seen a seagull for the first time. The friends inquired if it was fat. "Why ask?" Arthur responded. Answer: "Don't you know that in Denmark we eat them? We simmer the breasts in milk, sometimes with a little spice. Lovely." Arthur himself wasn't too surprised that seagulls provide food, for as a schoolboy he used to collect seagulls' eggs in season on Ireland's Eye and sell them to a Dublin exporter who sent them to London restaurants. He earned more, he says, at this part-time trade than did his teachers.
Back to the seagull. Is this widespread, using them for home cooking? A Norwegian friend was asked; he hadn't heard of it. Logically there is nothing against it: eat puffins, eat seagulls. Last comment. On a later visit our friend asked a citizen how it was that their town was so civilised, with no evidence of crime or vandalism. "That shows you haven't been here for long. In this very bar a man had his overcoat stolen three weeks ago. I read it in the newspapers."