The professor said to the group :
The gulls here are ringbilled, mostly.
They always look lost. Like they belong somewhere else.
I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.
— "Sea Fever," John Masefield
He watched a hundred gulls trail a wobbling scow downriver.
They had large strong hearts. He knew this, disproportionate
to body size. He'd been interested once and had mastered
the teeming details of bird anatomy. Birds have hollow bones.
He mastered the steepest matters in half an afternoon. . .
He stood a while longer, watching a single gull lift and ripple
in a furl of air, admiring the bird, thinking into it, trying to know
the bird, feeling the sturdy earnest beat of its scavenger's
ravenous heart.
— Cosmopolis, Don Delillo
He watched several gulls veering near and saw a hundred
other gulls positioned on a slope, all facing the same way,
motionless, regardful, joined in consciousness, in beautiful
empty birdness, waiting for the signal to fly.
— Underworld, Don Delillo