Gull Wars - 1

There's no doubt about it, herring gulls are fine birds, good-looking, intelligent and, judging by....

....their numbers along the shore, very successful - and therein lies the problem, because this town has far too many of them, to the extent that it might be appropriate to rename it Gullspie.  People might blame the tourists for feeding them or for leaving their fish-and-chip packets lying around where the gulls can get at them, but tourists have been scarce on the ground recently, so they cannot entirely be to blame.  To make matters worse, herring gulls can be very aggressive, harassing passers by for food, but they're even worse if their young are threatened - and we're now into their breeding season.

We noticed that herring gulls were collecting in large numbers on the green beside our house and marching up and down it, rather like line dancers, nodding their heads at each other.  We concluded that this was couples pairing off ready for the next stage of the mating game which, being such large birds....

....is a fairly ungainly process particularly as they do like to perform in full view of everybody.

The warning bells really began to ring for us when we kept coming home after our walks to find a gull sitting very comfortably on our chimney pot. Sadly, we don't have a solid fuel fire so were unable to cook the gull, leaving us with a real problem.  If the gulls nested on our chimney we wouldn't be able to eat out in the garden as the gulls would be joining in the meal, and they would be very aggressive anyway to anyone approaching them.  Drastic action was required.