Are we right to demonise Britain’s peckish gulls?
Even though one stole her chips, Boudicca Fox-Leonard learns to admire Britain’s most vilified birds
Ihad been warned. There’s no denying that. Following numerous headlines involving seagull aggression, including the abduction of a chihuahua called Gizmo from its owner’s back garden in Paignton, Devon, I had sought out an expert to fly me through the controversial topic of seagulls. Or rather, herring gulls, a type of gull we commonly refer to by the group name. Tony Whitehead was the man, an RSPB press officer in the South West and unabashed seagull lover. His advice was sage and logical. “We think of them as these big brutes but they’re more timid than you might think,” he said. “They don’t walk up to you, they tend to fly and will come over your shoulder. They use more of a sneak tactic. So it’s important not to eat food out in the open. Eat it under cover, or with your back to a wall.”
We were in Teignmouth, up the coast from the recent dog-snatch (Whitehead says he’s never previously heard of such a thing). We’d already been to Exeter and observed some apathetic urban seagulls, floating and preening on the water with their young. But these seaside
characters were a whole other kettle of fish. The weather was wet and the wind whippy as I watched a seagull hovering over the back of a mother and her daughter, waiting for an opportunity to swoop and… bottling it. A narrow escape for the humans and their snacks.
My hunger was fierce. It was way past lunch, yet as my steaming chips were handed to me by the kiosk vendor, Whitehead counselled me, repeatedly, not to open them up and eat them. Not until I was somewhere safe.
So the clobbering I got in the face, mere paces from the café, was a powerful reminder of everything I’d already been told, and my own hubris. Yet you can clearly see surprise on my face in the photos (the photographer was lucky to grab it; it wasn’t planned). I could blame the seagull, but the responsibility was really all mine. “I’m so glad my carton was firmly shut,” said Whitehead, his reputation on the line.
He gets regular calls about seagulls. Most are from journalists, and always at this time of year. Two reasons, he says. “In summer, the gulls’ young are just out of the nest. The parents are protective against anything they think is a threat – whether a little dog or a person. It only happens for a few weeks until the youngsters are confident enough to look after themselves.”
Yes, but they were after my chips! “The second reason is usually over food. It’s this time of year when we tend to be eating outdoors more.”
Along with many other species, seagulls have come to see us as a food source. Earlier, at the quayside in Exeter, two tame swans waddled up to me with their begging beaks for food. Gulls are no different – just a lot less polite.
Are they getting bolder? “Hand on heart, I can’t say it’s getting any worse,”
Whitehead says. And in case you were wondering, they aren’t getting any bigger either.
But they are thriving in urban areas, where flat rooftops mimic their clifftop natural habitats, but without the predators. Seagulls have been moving into urban areas since the Thirties, they’ve exploited landfill since the Fifties, and in recent years they’ve tucked in while our refuse piles up. The story is different on the coast: numbers are falling; linked in part to climatic changes at sea reducing the availability of fish. We should be celebrating those thriving city colonies, but in 2015 a YouGov poll indicated that 44 per cent of the public supported the idea of a gull cull. Whitehead loves them. “They’ve got lovely faces!” Aren’t they a bit mean-looking? “They’re noble birds. I’m having none of that. They’re lovely birds!”
He was “chuffed” when he heard about research that found staring at gulls actually deters them from snatching your food. Madeleine Goumas from Exeter University conducted a study where she ate chips on a beach. If she kept her eyes down, she was inundated with greedy seagulls. But if she stared at them as they approached, they would flap off.
“It proves something we said last year,” Whitehead noted. “We noticed that giving them the eye makes them nervous, so we put that advice out.”
It’s good advice; we tried it. They don’t like to be stared at. Clearly they dislike it so much, they instead ambush from behind.
Staring is not the solution. Neither, though, is killing the entire population of seagulls just so we can eat chips and ice cream outside. Whitehead shakes his head: “It feels extreme to say we’re going to have to kill a population of gulls because they are eating our chips. It seems a little… uncivilised.”
Councils are spending thousands on deterring gulls, pointlessly, he says. “Basically to stop gulls nesting in a town, you’ll need to net your whole town. It’s just moving them around from place to place.”
What we can address is the conflict. “We should be able to live alongside these birds. And it starts with simple actions like not feeding them, which you still see people doing.”
Gulls feed from a wide variety of places. They don’t need us to feed them. Interestingly, Whitehead tells me about a study tracking gulls in St Ives. “It indicated that not all of the gulls were trying to get hold of food from people, it was a very small group of gulls.”
So – just some bad eggs? We’re finishing our chips under the veranda of an amusement arcade. A lady next to me is having an ice cream. The gull problem says a lot about our own lives of excess – uneaten food, overflowing bins. The answer lies, as it so often does, within ourselves.
Take a report from Sarah Trotter, assistant professor of law at the London School of Economics and Political Science, published in May, which analysed the way in which urbannesting gulls are portrayed and the measures taken to combat them. Dr Trotter believes that positive aspects of gulls and public support for them are often “glossed over” by councils and local media in favour of anti-social behaviour orders. For example, Scarborough Borough Council encourages residents to report “gull attacks” by completing an online “seagull mugging and nuisance report form”.
This of the bird once beloved of fishermen as a sign of home, and for picking their nets clean on shore. “Gulls by the seaside are part of our heritage,” says Whitehead. “Listen to Desert Island Discs and they’re there, over the theme tune.”
But now we vilify them for adapting and surviving. As with much of the natural world, we’re quick to denounce that which doesn’t fit neatly into our human sphere. Something natural becomes a nuisance; a pest. Whitehead uses the example of red kites in the Midlands moving into suburban areas. “People are putting out meat to feed them. But it’s doing the same thing to them as the gulls. Now kites are dropping into kids’ garden parties. They are getting used to humans as a source of food.”
I get up close to a seagull, to stare at it. This time I notice how beautiful they are. The red dot on its beak, Whitehead tells me, is where the youngster will tap their parent so they know to feed them.
I feel a little sheepish. Next time I’m tempted to judge a seagull, I’ll take a long hard stare in the mirror and see how that feels.
‘Seagulls are noble, lovely birds. We should be able to live alongside them’