Seagulls are accused of starting a ‘crimewave’ on island

The Isle of Jura was hit by a seagull ‘crimewave’ last month, the Jura Jottings reports.

One marauder managed to steal a packet of link sausages from a shop delivery, while another attempted to make off with a leg of lamb from a visitor’s barbecue.

Elsewhere, this week in Essex a shopper was left bruised and bloodied when a seagull sunk its beak into her lip in a bid to seize her hash brown breakfast.

‘Humans have inadvertently taught gulls that our food is their food,’ the RSBP explained. ‘A gull can’t discern between a sausage roll dropped on the floor (free-pickings) and the one you’re unwrapping for lunch in the local park.

‘We must all stop feeding gulls, both inland and in seaside towns, and in our gardens, if we want to recondition their current behaviour.’ Argyll and Bute Council has urged the public to help keep streets clean by binning litter or taking it home.

The RSPB says ‘misunderstood’ seagulls get the worst press during the summer nesting season, when protective parents engage in ‘mobbing’. As spokesperson said: ‘It is a noisy, obvious form of behaviour that birds engage in to defend themselves or their offspring from predators.’ Surveyors, who often must clamber on to rooftops, have been given a guide on how to spot an attack.

First comes the ‘gag call’: a low, repeated warning that means ‘go away’. Next is the low pass, at great speed and alarmingly close, within a metre or so of the intruder’s head.

If you don’t move, the aerial bombardment begins in earnest. In phase one, gulls target the perceived threat with droppings and vomit, often with amazing accuracy. Phase two is all-out attack: usually a low, raking strike to the back of the head with talons extended.

Unsurprisingly, the advice is simply to move away, without flapping your arms, but raising them to protect your head.

Gulls have also been victims of cruel attacks this week.

Gulls are protected by the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, and anyone killing, injuring or taking a bird, damaging or destroying its nest or taking or destroying its eggs is guilty of an offence.

But it has not all been bad news: a man dived into a Devon river in his underwear to save a seagull from drowning, biting off fishing wire tangled around its wings and legs. It flew away to fight another day.