For the past several weeks Dr. Darling and I have suspected that a family of seagulls was nesting on the roof of our building directly above our bedroom window.

Normally, I love the seagulls that swoop around The Penthouse-Nordic...they're a constant reminder of how close we live to the Öresund. But the charm has worn off from weeks of being screeched awake at dawn, which occurs earlier and earlier with each passing day here in the land of the fast-approaching midnight sun. And because the bedroom window is actually built into the slope of the roof, it sometimes sounds as though the gulls are actually IN the room with us.

Today we figured out why. The baby gulls, which up to this point were purely hypothetical, have gotten big enough to leave the nest and have taken up residence on the large ledge directly outside our bedroom window, where their Mom swoops in on a regular basis with food. We hadn't noticed them before because of the blackout blinds attached to the inside of the window frames.

Naturally Momma gull got a little freaked out when she realized there were people on the other side of the blacked-out window, so we had to be very stealth about peeking out at them, photographing them, and checking on them during a passing thunderstorm. I now feel kind of guilty for being ready to lay strichnyne for them.

I just hope I can remember how cute those speckled seagull chicks are when their Mom delivers breakfast at 4:00 tomorrow morning.