Landfill

For about a century, gulls have followed people into towns and cities, trailing fishing boats, cargo barges, and rubbish lorries. Today they are more at home among humans than most birds, moving through the urban landscape and picking up food wherever they find it. In many ways their habits mirror our own, yet many people now regard them with suspicion. We label them thieving scavengers rather than resourceful opportunists, and treat them as strange visitors rather than fellow travellers. Their presence suggests that they have outgrown the places they have moved into.

The book looks at how people, living in what is often called the Anthropocene, have studied, classified, and then reshaped the natural world, turning some of it into farmland, gardens, or dumps. While many other birds have retreated from human settlement, and some have disappeared altogether, gulls show another possibility: wild creatures sharing our environment. Their story is also a story about us.

Rather than mourning a lost wilderness or offering a sentimental tribute, the author digs beneath the surface of everyday litter and dumping grounds to uncover odder and less comfortable truths about our relationship with the wild.