The great thing about taking a sea cruise is that you get the chance to commune with nature. Yes, you can always stop a car and get out, or open a window, but you know what I mean.

And gone are the days when you could straddle a plane’s wing like Ginger Rogers in the film, ‘Flying Down to Rio’.

On a ship it’s very simple, all you’ve got to do is go out on deck. With a bit of luck you’ll see fish and other sea creatures.

You can even collapse onto a deckchair and watch the sea birds fly by.

For those of you who are superstitious, I hope an albatross doesn’t end up hanging round your neck. If one does, you can always write a poem about the experience, or rewrite Samuel Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Just don’t kill the albatross for they say it’s bad luck. And the ship’s chef is unlikely to help you hide the corpse – not even in his oven.

According to a report just published in the journal The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the albatross and other birds, especially that avian family known as corvids (which includes crows, ravens, magpies, rooks, jays and jackdaws), are more likely to be observing you.

Apparently corvids (and the parrot family) are a lot more intelligent than chickens. Which probably explains why you never see them on a ship’s menu.

Sometimes I feel as if I’m on a bird’s menu, especially when I see a row of birds on a line. It reminds me of Alfred Hitchcock’s film where the avians decided they’d had enough of humans and started to kill us off.

There was also a cartoon many years ago in which a man on a cruise ship was feeding birds on deck. The first cartoon panel showed him holding his hand out – which was full of bird seed. The second panel showed a few birds on his arm pecking away at the seed. By the third panel he was covered with birds from head to foot. In the fourth panel the birds flew away and the man was gone…

By the way, unless you’re near land, the chances of seeing any members of the corvid or parrot family is unlikely.

Gulls are the most familiar of sea birds. They’re usually known as ‘sea gulls’ but in reality they tend to frequent inland waters and marshes that are often far from the sea.

The best place to observe them is from a ship’s stern, for gulls tend to exploit the abundance of edible rubbish dumped in the sea by human beings.

As for the albatross it usually flies (spectacularly) in the southern hemisphere, although with global warming they may have started drifting northwards.

While you’re pondering the relationship between humans and sea birds, don’t forget to pack a good pair of binoculars.

By the way, did you hear about the globe-trotting twitcher who spent £1000 on a lark? Or the bird-brained ostrich that was crossed with a glass of ale – the result was a beer with its head on the ground.

And if penguins are usually frigid, how do they mate?

Talking about birdies, there have been recorded instances of golfers knocking birds out of the sky with a ball.

If birds ever figure out just how clever they really are maybe they’ll join forces and throw the balls back at us from a great height.

That’s why I never play golf at sea.

Or anywhere else, for I am not a fan of knocking small white balls around the world. Golf is for the birds.

Rather like this blog post.

James Leavey

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Posted in Cruising, Humour