The first true snow of the season fell on campus today. Although the ground is still too warm for it to stick, clumps of snow began to gather on the evergreens and in the cruxes of bare-branched trees, lending a softened look to the skeletal twigs. The air was crisp and cool - clean for the first time in weeks. In the early morning cold I picked up a leaf, its edges rimed in glittering frost, and it left a perfect green silhouette on the icy grass below. The gulls stood isolated instead of in flight, their necks hunched deep into their feathers, giving an occasional peevish whine.

Hailing from coastal Maine, people don't often believe me when I claim that the gulls are different at home. They argue that a herring gull, Larus argentatus, is a herring gull anywhere. I beg to differ. On the rocky coast, the call of a seagull immediately conjures the vision and sound of waves crashing on the granite, the bronchial cough of diesel engines, and the raucous calls of lobstermen on their morning rounds. It is a series of high screeches, almost similar to that of the osprey. Inland, gulls cry like children, a mewing baby's whimper, or a single strangled squawk. These are not the seagulls one sees wheeling in flocks just aft of the lobsterboats or perched atop the spindles. These are trash gulls.