‘Driving me crazy’ Call for action to silence city’s squawking gulls
NOISY seagulls are ruining people’s lives in one corner of Bristol, according to one resident.
While the seagulls are mostly found in and around the harbourside and the city centre during the day, they tend to live in suburban areas where there are safe and peaceful nesting sites, like the area around Jenny Wring’s house in Ashton Vale.
She lives in the terraced streets close to Bedminster Down Road, overlooking a large area of industrial units and factories, which she said are heaven for nesting seagulls and a hell for her, her husband and her neighbours.
“They go off in the day, but come back in the evening, hundreds of them that you can see coming from the city,” she said. “They circle around and go back to their nests, and then during the night they’ll all start up again. It might be midnight or 1am and then again really loud when it gets light from about 4am.
“It really does drive you potty. I don’t get to sleep again and very often will have a night with only a couple of hours’ sleep.
“My husband is the same, he’ll get up in the morning saying he’s had no sleep. They are just squawking all night long.
“I’d love to know if other people are as affected by this, especially in Ashton Vale where they seem to be nesting.
“The light pollution in this area with all the factories and industrial units having their security lighting all night is an issue.
The problem has plagued Mrs Wring increasingly over the past few years – it’s got worse in the last year or two.
“I used to think it was the sandwiches and food waste left by the workers in the industrial units, but in lockdown, when it was all quiet last summer, they were just as noisy.
“I think the problem is all these flat roofs on the industrial units are perfect, because there is no one around at night to bother the seagulls, and in the day they are off somewhere else.
“The people working in the industrial places don’t know or care, because they finish work and go home in the evening, and maybe don’t know that after they’ve gone the seagulls arrive on the roof.”
Mrs Wring said she went to her local MP Karin Smyth about the issue, and was told they were a protected species and there was little that could be done.
She also contacted Bristol City Council to see if there was anything the council could do, given the noise nuisance.
“They told me they used to respond and do something when people complained, but funding had been cut and now they did nothing,” said Mrs Wring.
Bristol City Council confirmed this was the case. When asked about what the council did about the issue of seagulls, a council spokesperson referred to a statement made in 2017, after the council cut funding to a project to try to manage the population of seagulls in the first budget of then-new mayor Marvin Rees’s Labour administration – soon after the new council discovered a £30 million ‘black hole’ in the council’s budget.
Back then, after a seagull expert warned the problem of seagulls disturbing residents and attacking people for food would increase, the council said: “Due to legal restrictions around the treatment of seagulls, managing their population is a complicated process and there is limited action a local authority can take.
“In the past, the council has employed a variety of techniques including egg replacement, netting and monitoring flight patterns to attempt to manage the situation,” a council spokesperson said.
“None of these methods are cheap so, in line with the vast majority of other local authorities in the country, the council took the decision to stop running this service as part of a range of savings proposals at February’s full council budget meeting,” the statement in 2017 said.
“We will continue to campaign for cleaner streets across the city which should have an impact on where gulls nest but will not take direct action against the birds.”.
Mrs Wring is calling on businesses to do more to discourage seagulls from nesting on their roofs and buildings.
“It drives me crazy,” she said. “I work during the daytime as an NHS administrator, and it’s a very stressful job.
“I’m up at 5am every day, and I go to bed quite early but there’s some nights I won’t get any sleep. Someone said I should move, but why should I? Other people in this area must be suffering too, it’s crazy, absolutely crazy.”
It really does drive you potty. I don’t get to sleep again and very often will have a night with only a couple of hours’ sleep ... they are just squawking all night Jenny Wring