‘Black-backed gulls’

‘Black-backed gulls’

Percy Bagnall made this colour lithograph of two black-backed gulls in 1919. The plaintive call of these birds, the largest of the three New Zealand gulls, resonates around the coastline. The wailing cry inspired poetry of lamentation:

Tangi amio ana te karoro it te awa.
Ngā tohu o te ipo unuhia noatia.

The gulls circle the channel, crying.
They are signs my beloved is taken from me.

Quoted in Margaret Orbell, Birds of Aotearoa. Auckland: Reed, 2003, pp. 148–9