Thoughtless actions of gull feeders ‘must be tackled’
Sir, – In you edition last week, there were two letters referring to gulls in an urban area. One was about two young gulls being run over by a car in Elgin, the other letter was from Dagmar Gross, who wrote about people ‘deliberately feeding gulls’ in their gardens, bringing all the anti-social noise and mess with it.
After a short time, the gulls look for the food thrown out by these thoughtless people. Where we live, as soon as daylight begins to break, 4-5am, these gulls are screaming from the rooftops, adjacent to these folk, for more food to be thrown to them.
Several hours later, when these people are up and about, the gulls spot them, then fly down onto the shed roofs in the gardens. They bring their young gull chicks with them. These young birds have only just learnt to fly, yet here they are with their parents, waiting for a back door to open, to grab their daily diet of Hovis, discretely thrown out to them.
The birds sit around all day, every day, and well into the evening
A dead seagull on the road is a common sight nowadays at this time of the year, especially dead young seagulls. This past few weeks I’ve seen a couple of dozen or more, and one of the factors for this must be these thoughtless individuals, encouraging the birds to feed in their gardens, causing them to nest on other people’s rooftops. When the young learn to fly, it’s obvious they’re going to go near the roads, and many get killed.
I’ve no time for this type of anti-social behavior by a thoughtless few, who seem to think they can more or less stick two fingers up at the rest of us. The noise and mess these people, and others like them, bring to neighborhoods through their thoughtless actions must be tackled. It even encourages rats and other vermin, who live on scraps of food the gulls can’t reach.
Moray Council have now given us ‘all’ the opportunity to report ‘any’ persistent offender
Tony Sherwood
40 Inchbroom Avenue,
Lossiemouth.
