I went out metal detecting yesterday. I found a few cool but worthless old coins, and a kitchen knife. Probably the knife was lost by a picnicker, but honestly it was a bit random to just be buried in the sand where I found it, as it was well below the tide line.

I’ve found a few knives on the beach before…

like this bad boy from a few weeks ago. But it doesn’t happen often… maybe five knives in a year plus of detecting? I’ve thought about carrying one when I go detecting, for all the reasons you might want a pocket knife in the out of doors, but so far it’s not a habit with me.

So imagine my surprise when a beach goer came up to me half an hour later and said “Do you have a knife by any chance?”

It turned out that they had caught a seagull (almost certainly a young black-billed gull, but I can’t really distinguish between them and a less common red-billed gull) who was struggling to fly because it had a piece of fishing line, including the hook and sinker, badly wrapped around its wing. The skin around the bird’s shoulder joint was pretty red and irritated, but everything appeared to be in working order.

We used the knife to cut the line and let the bird go. It stood around by the edge of the water for a while, and then flew away.

Yay!!

And after a good scrub and trip through the dishwasher, that knife is in service chez nous.