One person a week hurt in dive-bombing seagull attacks
IT sounds like a scene from an Alfred Hitchcock film, but Cornwall has seen a rise in patients being treated for injuries after attacks by swooping seagulls.
Aggressive gulls on Britain’s coastlines are no longer content to steal leftover chips, experts say, and pharmacists in Cornwall have reported seeing at least one patient a week who had been left bloodied or cut as a result.
Many more are likely to have treated their wounds at home.
In some cases, young children have been left with cuts to their faces after birds attempted to steal food out of their mouths, the pharmacists said.
NHS Kernow clinical commissioning group said some cases had left children and pensioners in hospital.
Earlier this year, MPS warned that many coastal towns were being “terrorised” by the birds, which appear to have become more aggressive, leaving some calling for a cull.
Gull experts said the birds have worked out that they could get more food dive-bombing people than by scrabbling for scraps.
Claire Field, a community pharmacist at Carbis Bay, close to St Ives, said: “We have seen adults and young children with cuts around and inside their mouths as well as their hands where sneaky seagulls have swooped down to take their food.”
As a minimum, any cuts should be cleaned with antiseptic, she said.