In the European summer, a new pastime is gaining strength: plotting the demise of an endangered species.
How to get rid of the highly adaptive seagull – most types of gull being protected – is a civic issue to rival pot holes. Every year, the gull problem – or the perception of it – gets worse, yet conservation scientists say gulls’ numbers are in serious decline. These crafty birds have managed the seemingly impossible, to be critically endangered and aggressively pestilential at the same time.
It would be histrionic to invoke Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, but urban gulls do appear to be getting bolder, leaving the more-fabled corvids – crows, jackdaws and magpies – looking coy by comparison.
In Venice, diners are sometimes provided with water pistols to squirt gulls coveting their tucker. Britain’s Royal Mail recently apologised for suspended deliveries due to posties being divebombed by protective gull parents during peak nesting time.
Ambivalence increased in Rome during lockdown at the gruesome spectacle of gulls, deprived of human food to scavenge, eviscerating rodents.
Here in Ireland, almost everyone has a tale of swooping talons snatching food from their hands. The typical riposte, “Well, yer mammy always said it was common to eat in the street”, lies at the heart of the problem. Open-air eating and rather casual food waste management have made cities the world over quite viable for gulls – and foxes, bears, boars and other habitat-squeezed creatures.
Given ever-rising temperatures, local authorities typically struggle to afford timely disposal of reeking summer rubbish, and some arch commentators have suggested that outsourcing it outright to the gulls, rodents and foxes would be more efficient and scarcely less hygienic.
The gulls’ special dichotomy is that, besides habitat loss, humans’ fishing has drastically decreased their staple wild food sources – notably eel worms, fish and crustaceans – forcing increasing numbers to semi-domesticate and scavenge. Thousands racket around in cities but pitifully small numbers still live as nature intended, in the coastal wilds.
People might like to drive the city squawkers back to sea, but they won’t go because they’d starve.
People have been successfully prosecuted for killing gulls, penalties bolstered by studies showing that the Scottish common gull population, for instance, has halved since 2000.
Perhaps too clever for their own good, urban gulls appear so numerous and unabashedly prosperous, people can’t believe they’re vulnerable. Their summer chorus can start as early as 4am. A sleep-deprived Glasgow writer, Natasha Radmehr, has theorised that they’re cunning enough to hide in the bins to evade the experts who keep tabs on gull numbers.
Periodically, various cities have authorised culls but these are controversial and legally dubious. London’s Shard building successfully employs a trained Chilean blue eagle named Guido to patrol its ramparts to deter gulls nesting and, shall we say, retexturising its gleaming facade. Falconers have been mooted for other problem areas, since gulls scarper when confronted with a bird of prey. But the gulls’ foes are also regulated and protected, so falconry services can run to hundreds of euros per session. Beady, persistent and territorial, gulls simply wait until the budget has run out and resume their occupancy.
There’s evidence of avian flu further curtailing their numbers. But their indefatigably rowdy urban presence masks their decline, rivalling even the weather for monopolising Europeans’ grizzling.
Faced with mounting demands for a cull, British wildlife authorities have taken to advertising that two common items that can lessen the weather misery – a parasol/brolly and a sturdy hat – are equally effective against gulls. But, if you know your Hitchcock, the wily scavengers are probably already caucusing with the corvids on a hat-and-brolly bombing evolution.
