• The Guardian
  6 Wednesday 24 July 2019

gulls work.” He has seen a gull partly

swallow a sardine, only for another

to pull it out of its mouth. “You may

think it’s your house and you have

all the paperwork to prove it, but the

fact is, the gulls have settled on your

roof, so therefore it’s theirs.”

Are gulls becoming more

aggressive? Steve Portugal, an

ecophysiologist at Royal Holloway,

University of London, doesn’t

think so. “I think it’s more they’re

coming into contact with us more,”

he says – and when these very rare

occurrences do happen, they’re

publicised in newspapers and on

social media. “Gulls have shifted

their distribution and behaviours

away from traditional nesting sites,

which would have been cliff s and

quite isolated areas, and started

living in more urban areas because

we make it easy for them. It only

happens when there are babies

involve d – they are not randomly

attacking people in November, it’s

only ever to protect their young.” But

does this proximity to people mean

they are becoming bolder? “I guess

it’s possible,” he says, although he

adds that there hasn’t been any

research done on this. “What would

stop animals attacking us normally is

fear, so it’s possible that any animal

encountering people more often –

urban foxes, for example – would

become bolder. It would make sense

that, over time, they gradually

This time

of year is

when gulls

that have made

towns and cities

their homes are

at their most

aggressive

A slight ripple

in the wind behind me, the briefest
graze of my hair and, within a split
second, the ice-cream cone had been
snatched from my hand. One second
I was holding a mint choc chip, the
next I wasn’t. It was so fast, and the
raid so precise, I didn’t really see it
happen – just a vision of the gull’s
tail feathers as it took to the sky.
I share my south-coast town with
the gulls and you learn to be wary
of them. Once, one landed on our
table outside a fi sh and chip shop
and made off with half our dinner.
They nest noisily on our roof and
like to wake us up at 5am every
morning; they rip open the rubbish
sacks people leave on the streets and
creep close on the beach, looking for
snacks.
On Sunday, a gull snatched a
chihuahua, Gizmo, from a garden
in Devon. “My partner was in the
garden putting the washing out at
the time and suddenly, he saw it
swoop down,” the dog’s distraught

owner told Devon Live. “It carried

Gizmo a fair way as we couldn’t see

him any more. I have no idea if he

was dropped or where he is now.”

In 2015, in Cornwall, a yorkshire

terrier had to be put down after

gulls attacked him, leaving him with

serious head wounds. His owner

said “it was like a murder scene”.

The same year, again in Cornwall, a

pet tortoise died after being attacked

by gulls.

Last month, the Royal Mail told

some Cardiff residents that post

deliveries could be aff ected by gull

attacks on postal workers. “Our

postmen and women can experience

diffi culties out when delivering or

collecting mail due to swooping

attacks by seagulls,” residents

were told. In Lancashire, a couple

reported being kept hostage in their

house for days because a pair of

gulls – whose chicks had slipped

and fallen on to the porch above the

front door – would dive-bomb them

every time they tried to leave. In

2013, a woman had to have hospital

treatment for cuts to her head

sustained during an attack by a gull

and, in 2002, a man died of a heart

attack after being swooped at by the

birds in his garden.

This time of year is when seagulls

• the herring gulls and lesser black-
  backed gulls that have made towns
  and cities their home – are at their
  most aggressive. “ Nestlings are
  becoming fl edglings and when they
  take their fi rst fl ight, they don’t
  necessarily fl y very well,” says
  Peter Rock, who has spent years
  researching urban gull populations.
  “Often, the adult birds will hit them
  and drive them to the ground. It’s
  a bizarre spectacle, but the reason
  is, when they fl y a bit too early,
  the likelihood is they’ll crash into
  something and really damage
  themselves.” The nestlings may end
  up being pushed down into a garden,
  to protect them, and if there are lots
  of shrubs or not enough room “for
  a run-up and a takeoff , they may be
  there for a day or two. The parents
  know their nestling is there and they
  will look after it.”
  A lot of eff ort has gone into raising
  that chick. “They’re sitting on
  eggs for a month, and the fl edgling
  period is about six weeks. Then
  after that, for a week or two, they

Wings

of ire

look after them while they get used

to fl ying. There is an investment

of maybe 12 weeks. At this time of

year, if something happens to their

off spring, they won’t try again,

so that means they won’t breed

until next year. So the birds are

quite fearless in protecting their

young.” This will include trying to

scare off anything they think may

harm it, including people and dogs.

“ Incidents of gulls attacking dogs

are not unknown, but it is rare,”

says Rock. “The one thing we need

to diff erentiate between is a real

attack and a low pass – a threatening

swoop. They will swoop at you,

but won’t come any closer than

8-10f t. What they’re trying to do is

drive you away from their territory.

An attack will always come from

behind, they will keep swooping

at you until they get the opening to

attack.” He recommends anyone

being terrorised by gulls to carry a

golf umbrella.

At any other time of year, he

says, “gulls are not the slightest

bit aggressive, unless it’s about

competition for food”. It felt

pretty aggressive when the gull

snatched my ice-cream – a kilo of

bird, swooping at 45mph with a

wingspan of a bout 1.5 metres – but

Rock says that is merely a question

of ownership. “You m ay have paid

the money for it, but that doesn’t

mean it’s yours – that’s how the

become more used to people.”

We don’t know what the current

population of gulls is, although

there is a survey being done this

year, says Tony Whitehead at the

RSPB. At the last count, in 2004,

there were 130,000 herring gull pairs

in summer, swelling to 730,000

individual birds in winter. “What we

do know, on the censuses that have

been carried out over the past 30

years, is there has been a decline in

the number of herring gulls overall,”

says Whitehead. As a result, the

birds are protected and on the red

list of threatened species. “We also

know birds in towns and cities are

producing more young successfully

than those away from towns and

cities, so it is quite possible the

[urban] population is going up, but

what we don’t know is whether

that’s off setting the overall decline.”

I In the 19th century,

there were no gulls in London, says

Tim Dee, the wildlife writer and

author of Landfi ll. “Only in the 20th

century did gulls begin to come up

the Thames. Some people began to

feed them – people would come to

the riverbank and share their lunch

with them.” The Clean Air Act 1956

meant councils stopped burning

rubbish, and so landfi ll sites started

to fi ll up with waste food – this

was also the end of rationing and

the beginning of our convenient,

throwaway culture. The gulls, drawn

by easy food, started to move inland.

“The two crucial sources of food are

the stuff people chuck away in the

street, but more substantially, the

landfi ll sites, which peaked in the

early 1990s,” says Dee. “This was

before we began recycling our food

waste. In the 1980s and 1990s, the

fi rst gulls in substantial numbers

started breeding on rooftops, fi rst of

all in seaside towns, but increasingly

moving inland.”

They discovered that towns and

cities made more hospitable homes

than cliff tops on islands. “There

A dog in Devon

was recently

carried away by

a swooping gull.

Are such attacks

becoming more

frequent, asks

Emine Saner

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