Straight to the number one spot on my list of most delusional comments ever.
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Much more fun going into Victor Meldrew mode 
The buggers also wake me up squawking at 3am most days recently - do they have no sense of time and decency 
You keep a list of such things? Iām honoured.
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Gulls are pretty nasty creatures to my mind. They are aggressive, not just to tourists eating fish and chips, but to each other. They kill the young of other gulls born nearby just to protect their own food supply. I could never like them. BUT, we ate all their fish. So next time one pinches your food, wakes you up, craps or vomits in your face, just accept that if we hadnāt destroyed their natural habitat, they would leave us alone.
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Iāve lived along side them most of my life and have had my fair share of run ins with them especially whilst working at roof top level whilst they have chicks and have found a high powered water pistol usually sorts them out if they get too close, the water pistol also deters unwanted cats who want use my garden as a litter tray.
They wake me up too early through the summer months and are generally a pain in the backside but they are just a part of life down here on the coast and as for throwing good food away perhaps the supermarkets could play a part and cater more for single people and couples who live alone.
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As a twitcher I feel the need to stick up (just a little bit) for the so called āseagullā.
The gull in question is the herring gull. Other gulls such as the black-backs, common & yellow-legged come into play to a lesser extent.
The herring gull is an opportunist & omnivorous feeder; they eat predominantly carrion, offal, seeds, fruits, young birds, eggs, small mammals, insects & surprisingly (for some) live fish only if & when they can get them.
They nest naturally in rocks, cliffs & such like, but over the many hundreds of years have adapted to living the easy life with what we humans provide. We provide all they need, flat sheltered nesting sites, feeding locations & opportunities in streets & parks, in town rubbish bins, landfill sites, ploughed & newly seeded fields ā¦ & lots of etcās.
As a result they have become (un-naturally) widespread. They can be found everywhere inland all year round, but adults move to the coast during the spring/summer breeding season swelling the population during during the human holiday season. Its the perfect gulls good life to be sure.
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These days Mike I see a lot of black headed gulls in towns as well, on ponds and flying around where I suspect tthere is landfilll. They tend to be noisy, but I havenāt seen aggression.
ā¦Mike, not missing out ice cream in cones! One lesson on the coast in Devon is keep your ice cream cone close 
I suspect over the years the changes in fisheries and also the phasing out of landfill sites has driven them in to towns and cities. Things got so bad recently for a seaside town north of Dublin that they got special EU dispensation to remove eggs from nests in a attempt to curb numbers
Totally agree. Last nightās SW news programme, Spotlight, was speculating on the decline of our trawler fleets being responsible for the gullsā increasing dependence upon our leftovers.
Nah, they obviously donāt know herring gulls. The numbers are as they are because they simply take the opportunities that are available; they populate (grow or reduce) their populations dependant on the locally available food. The reduction in fishing fleet has little or nothing to do with the problems we have with local gull populations. Trawlers are long distance boats, north Atlantic & beyond, the gulls that followed them are more than likely from Iceland, Scandinavia, Greenland, & North America.
The inshore fisheries have reduced but not that quickly or dramatically considering the herring gull life span is aprx 20 years. The destruction through over fishing of the huge herring, sardine (pilchard) & sprat shoals was many years ago & its loss has no bearing on the current UK/Ire/Eur gull population
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any one come across Jonathan Livingston Sea gull ?
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Well, gulls almost certainly smell food, as they are highly adapted to sniff it out. Itās a matter of survival after all. The most sensible thing to do with recyclable packaging is to wash it out before putting it out. We put jars and plastic waste in the dishwasher with our normal crockery so itās clean before we put it out. Nothing then for the gulls to sniff out.
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Did they ever find that chihuahua in the end?
I suspect not.
Chihuahua last seen by Bruce Springsteen, being carried across his veranda by a coyoteā¦(the gulls have allies!)
Wonderful little book. It used to be almost mandatory reading for teenagers in the 60s/70s. I still have my copy, which sits in the guest room bookcase. Your mention has prompted a re-read!
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I think it was a small chihuahua
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They found a boneā¦