Watch the birdie
RICHARD!’ Tara called into the sky above her garden where the gulls wheeled. Her new home in a nearby village had come with an impassioned entreaty from the previous owners to feed their pet seagull. Standing outside with a bowl of scraps, Tara was finding it difficult to identify Richard among the flock of gulls gathering over her head. Each of the birds seemed to lay claim to that name. It was an ‘I’m Spartacus’ moment. I told her she should quietly forget her one-bird avianaid legacy. It would only lead to trouble when she wants to entertain on her terrace.
Earlier this year, I had sat in the alfresco restaurant area of the smarty-pants Gritti Palace hotel in Venice and watched the gulls pinch French fries off wellheeled diners’ plates at roughly a fiver a chip. Slightly down the pecking order of food outlets is the Cheesy Toast Stack café in St Andrews, where one Gritti chip equals roughly one sandwich and the owners have had to take desperate measures against the marauding gulls: for a quid, they offer punters insurance against sandwich loss.
Believe it or not, herring gulls are red-listed as under threat. It’s our fault, of course. We’ve emptied the seas of their food supplies, forcing the poor creatures to resort to violent crime and earning them the rep of being rats with wings. In many ways, the role of gulls as Nature’s dustmen is welcome. Ravens and red kites did the same in Elizabethan London.
After the annual festival held on our farm, the gulls move in to tidy up the edible rubbish left on the ground. They make a tidy job of it. Being intelligent birds, however, gulls don’t stop at litter collection; they move on to mugging when the rubbish runs out. In Inverness, where their previous restaurant, the landfill site, has closed, brutalised residents have been stitched up in A&E and toddlers have been left screaming in tears thanks to the local grey-and-white mob.
Urban roofscapes offer excellent nesting areas and, in Inverness, gulls had been controlled by the licensed removal of eggs from their nests. This year, however, Naturescot, the government licensing body, has adopted more stringent conditions, which has
Our gull problem springs partly from the inflexible interface where Nature meets bureaucracy
increased the period it takes to issue licences to 28 days. The eggs hatch in 21 days, so, by the time the bureaucrats catch up, the birds have flown. The end result is an estimated 90% more gulls in the city centre. Echoing the recent delay in licensing the relocation of a Kentish dormouse nest, which is holding up work on one of the county’s busiest roundabouts, our gull problem springs partly from the inflexible interface where Nature meets regulation and bureaucracy.
Nature suffers, too. Recently, I found a wounded badger. It had been run over and it seemed its pelvis was broken, as it paddled in pathetic circles. In the old days, I would have delivered a coup de grâce, but I wasn’t going to risk a 10-grand fine or 12 months in chokey. I called the vets. No dice taking it there. Tommy Brock carries too many diseases. Next call was to the ‘Cruelty’, as the SSPCA are known hereabouts. A helpful lady asked to be sent a video. When another lady called to say she’d be there in an hour, I offered to expedite matters with a .22 slug on condition she emailed me permission. By the time the poor beastie was put out of its misery, it had suffered for an extra hour at least as the wheels of wildlife regulation ground.