The other night we saw a flock of ring-billed gulls in the Target parking lot around 7 pm. I'm sure the birds migrated back before this week, but it was the first time I'd seen them this spring.

Some of their calls were so plaintive and human-sounding, I thought a guy sitting in a truck near the flock was taunting them. But it was just the birds. If you want to give a listen to the call, click here .

After we came out of Target, I asked Jeff to drive close to the gulls so I could feed them some flour tortillas we had left over from our dinner.

"What, do you want a Tippi Hedren moment?" he asked.

"It will make them happy," I said.

And the gulls did go crazy over the tortilla strips I threw. I was glad to be sitting in the car — even as it was the gulls came up pretty close. The insides of their mouths were bright pink.

Gulls are another bird that people consider garbage animals. People get nervous around flocks of birds that are noisy and aggressive, and ring-bills are both those things. But I think animals that have learned to live successfully alongside humans are despised for that reason. Ring-bills like parking lots and are good scavengers, so therefore they're trashy birds. I even read on one website that people call ring-bills "fast food gulls." Yikes.

As we were driving away, we saw one gull about 200 feet away from the original spot, and it had a piece of tortilla in its mouth. I think it just wanted a peaceful place to eat.