is mostly not much disturbance,”
says Rock. “It’s 4-6C warmer, which
means gulls are capable of starting
their breeding season earlier than
those who breed on islands. We
provide them with street lighting,
which means they can forage at
night as well as during the day.” He
has seen birds take a “steam bath”
using the emissions from heating
fl ues. “Then, after that, they will
fi nd extractor fans blowing out
warm air, so they’ll get a blow-dry
as well.”
They are clever, resilient birds.
“Many admire them for their
adaptive skills,” says Dee. “Some
people hate them and think they’re
the new urban pigeons.” Are they
a problem? “A lot of people see it
PHOTOGRAPHS: GETTY; PAthat way,” says Rock. “My personalCash-strapped
councils spend
thousands on
controlling the
birds – but there
is no evidence
it works
Gizmo, the
unlucky
chihuahua
opinion is I wish people would see
the decline of some species as a
problem.” There is a view that other
bird species are being pushed out by
gulls, but Rock doesn’t believe this is
the case.
Still, cash-strapped councils are
spending hundreds of thousands
of pounds on trying to control the
birds. In her research, Sarah Trotter,
an assistant professor of law at the
London School of Economics, found
Dumfries and Galloway in
Scotland spent £263,000
between 2009 and 2016;
Aberdeen spent £27,000 in
2015-16. The people doing
well out of our growing antagonistic
relationship with gulls, points out
Rock, are the pest control companies- who use plastic owls in an attempt
to scare them away, fl y birds of prey,
erect netting and swap eggs in nests
for fake ones – even though he says
there is no evidence any of it works.
And, says Whitehead: “If you
don’t know what the overall
population is, you don’t know
at what point controls become
damaging. You can apply to Natural
England for a licence to cull gulls,
but you’ve got to come up with some
good reasons to do this.” This could
include gulls nesting at airports,
for instance. “Nicking a chip is
not a good reason to kill whole
populations of animals.”
A better solution, he says, would
be to change our own behaviour.
“You can walk down the seafront
and you will see people throwing
the odd chip, or a bit of sandwich,
for a gull. Gulls are quite long-lived
birds – up to 30 years – and as soon
as they associate humans with food,
they won’t distinguish between food
that is given and food that is there
for the taking. They also learn pretty
quickly that if bin bags are left out or
aren’t collected, that our streets are
pretty good sources of food. If there
is a confl ict, it’s in the way we deal
with food.”
Noise and nuisance is one thing,
but actual, direct aggression is still
very rare, says Portugal. “If you
know there’s a gull nest then it’s
probably good to avoid being around
it too much to avoid any direct
confrontation. But I don’t think it’s
got to The Birds stage, where we
should all be worried.”
A gull,
undeterred by
a plastic owl7
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