She felt like life had no meaning — so she started screaming like a gull

Life received you down? Attempt throwing your head again and screeching like a gull.

That is what Anna Brynald did. A private loss a couple of years in the past impressed the Danish girl to chase her desires, irrespective of how foolish. So she signed up for the 2025 European Championship Gull Screeching contest, and received gold.

“It was so refreshing to fulfill so many individuals that identical to seagulls, like me,” Brynald instructed As It Occurs host Nil Kӧksal.  “I like that the seagulls like fries, as a result of I like fries, and so they’re only a bit misunderstood, like me. And so they’re cute.”

WATCH | 2025 European Championship Gull Screeching: 

Contestants screech for the celebrities on the European gull screeching championship

Chicken lovers from throughout Europe gathered on the Belgian coastal city of De Panne on Sunday for the fifth version of the European Championship Gull Screeching contest, designed to carry some optimistic press to the oft-maligned creatures. Anna Brynald of Denmark took house the gold.

Sunday’s competitors drew gull lovers from throughout Europe to the Belgian coastal city of De Panne.

Wearing gull costumes, 60 contributors from 14 international locations received on stage on the De Verloren Gernoare café and belched out their finest gull imitations in three classes — grownup, junior and colony.  A jury awarded factors based mostly on sound and efficiency. 

One contestant did her finest gull impression by stopping between squawks to lunge her face right into a bag of chips, drawing raucous applause from the gang.

However Brynald — decked out in feathers, brilliant yellow lipstick and white face paint — squealed and squawked her technique to victory within the grownup contest. 

Cooper Wallace, 10, of Chesterfield, England, received the junior class for the second 12 months working, whereas an Italian group known as Partisan Seagulls received the colony class.

“The seagull lives in every single place. The seagull can modify and be resilient and keep in each atmosphere,” Italian victor Enrico Pittaluga mentioned. “That must be the objective of humanity at all times.”

Brynald says she ready for the competition by practising her shockingly excessive pitch at house, on-line and within the wild. 

“I labored with the seagulls. I went to the seashore and I checked out many seagulls, and I believed they appeared good. And I screeched at them, however they grew to become fearful of me,” she mentioned. 

“Perhaps I am saying one thing fallacious in seagull language. I do not know.”

If there’s no that means in life, meaning I can do actually every part I need. I could make seagull sounds, as a result of I do not care.– Anna Brynald, champion gull screecher

If it sounds ludicrous, that is the purpose. Brynald says the lack of her finest pal two and a half years in the past taught her the significance of prioritizing frivolity and enjoyable.

“He died, and I received an existential disaster. I could not see the that means in life,” she mentioned.

“Then I remembered that is the attractive [thing]. If there’s no that means in life, meaning I can do actually every part I need. I could make seagull sounds, as a result of I do not care. I [might not be] right here tomorrow. I simply need to do what’s enjoyable and never take into consideration what different folks take into consideration me.”

‘Extra sympathy for the seagulls’

Whereas the occasion encourages enjoyable, it additionally has a extra severe function. 

Began by comic Claude Willaert, the European Championship Gull Screeching contest companions with analysis and conservation organizations to assist change the narrative about our fry-eating feathered associates.

Whereas gulls could seem plentiful, their populations are, in reality, declining worldwide, pushed by a lack of nesting habitats and meals.

“Some folks hate them. They see them like rats of the ocean as a result of they will peck open garbage baggage, as a result of they screech so much, they make loads of noise, they breed on roofs, and so they go away their droppings in every single place,” mentioned Jen Seys, president of the jury, and spokesperson for the Flanders Marine Institute.

“However the distinction is that these seagulls additionally belong to the coast. They’re a necessary a part of the ocean coast, and their sounds, their calls and their acrobatic behaviour, it is simply a part of the ocean coast. So you might want to steadiness that. We’d like some extra sympathy for the seagulls.”

Brynald, in the meantime, hopes to be again in Belgium once more for subsequent 12 months’s contest, if she will be able to scrounge up the journey and resort fare. 

Regardless of her victory, she says she was a little bit beneath the climate on Sunday and did not carry out at her finest.

“I feel subsequent 12 months, if I take part subsequent 12 months I will be even higher,” she mentioned. “I will, to start with, not be sick. And I feel I will want some extra feathers.”