Gulls, Why You Shouldn’t Feed Them.

The debate on gulls continues to roll on and on, so perhaps I can shed some new light on the gull question based on several years personal experience - dealing with gulls in some form or another. First of all we have to realise that Gulls have been around long before us, they are intelligent fast learners, and they live a long time.

They are primarily Predators but are so adaptable that they can forage anytime anywhere and are learning new skills all the time. Watching gulls drumming the ground to bring worms to the surface is now quite common whereas some years ago this would have been a rare event. Something that struck me some time ago was their instant attraction to anything white, and I wondered why the attraction was so strong. All gulls are predominantly white themselves, presumably it's easier to see each other at great distances over the sea perhaps. When some find a shoal of fish for instance others can see them and quickly join the feast. Their attraction to white is even more marked in Town where they are continually faced with white carrier bags, white polystyrene fast food containers, and white fish and chip papers. Then there is the human bounty of white bread providers, quite simply white means food ! 

Having cared for quite a few young injured gulls over the years, and observed adults and their offspring at length, I copied the adults feeding routine on the young injured gulls before releasing them back to the wild. The adults deliberately reduce the amount of food they give their young in order to wean them and make them self sufficient predators. We have all seen the young gulls walking behind the parents, head bowed and peeping constantly for food. The parents have a crop full of food but they refuse to give in, except when needed to keep their offspring alive. This strategy is for the good of the offspring and their future survival, and forces them to the seashore to join flocks that will hunt and scavenge shellfish, molluscs, eels, etc.

Misguided townies who think the birds are starving because they are always on the scrounge are doing the seagulls no favours by throwing them food. They are in effect creating townie seagulls who are unlikely to head to the seashore when they are being fed by benefactors. These gulls then become the long lived pests that will resort to snatching sandwiches or chips from children or adults, and end up being the scourge that empty litter bins and dive bomb you, making the newspaper headlines.

I have made quite a few enemies over the years, by trying to educate people into what not to do regarding feeding the gulls on the riverside. They are creating gull colonies that would normally be fishing the seashore, they put the lives of young ducklings at risk, because a feeding frenzy means that gulls will take everything that floats in the vicinity.

 They also deprive people trying to feed the ducks and swans because they move away when bombarded by marauding gulls. People innocently and naively carry a white carrier bag to feed the ducks, in effect the carrier bag is a flag to the gulls to come and get it!

Gulls are intelligent and only need fed once or twice to remember you, so remember  feed them at your peril, because you will never get peace to feed the ducks or swans in future.

For all the talk amongst the powers that be, there are still no decent sized signs placed strategically around the Town warning people NOT TO FEED THE GULLS.

 The bins are still allowed to overflow and give easy access to the gulls. Personally, we should start exercising a bit of control over our own species - before we start killing another !