feeding seagull
Please don’t feed the seagulls!
One of the, er, features of Dartmouth is its large community of seagulls. Visitors often see them as fun and interesting parts of the town’s charm.
Often they feed them, and it’s understandably upsetting for these visitors when local residents tell them (sometimes not so politely) not to do so.
The thing is, despite everyone’s’ assumption that animals are rather dumb, seagulls are dashed intelligent.
Here at By the Dart towers we love wildlife and absolutely respect the Herring Gull for its ability to scavenge and find food in whatever circumstances it finds itself. Over the millennia, this skill has allowed it to thrive and flourish along the coasts of Britain, and for this, we salute it.
It has, quite rightly, realised that humans provide a lot of food that can be picked up rather more easily than in its evolutionary niche out to sea and on windy cliffs. It hangs around humans because, well, we are liable to give them food, and if we don’t we are very messy and leave it lying around
Well, for the sake of saving a visitor from upset, here are a few reasons why residents of Dartmouth (i.e. us) would ask any holidaymakers, very respectfully, not to feed the seagulls or leave litter.
1/ The birds get a taste for food from humans and start stealing it out of their hands – seriously, this happens much more often than you might think. Thanks to the constant feeding by tourists, the typical Dartmouth Seagull has the same fear levels for humans as Margaret Thatcher had self-doubt – i.e. not very much. I personally have seen a seagull take a full size pasty out of a man’s hand whilst on the wing and have lost three sandwiches myself to the flying terrors.
Basically, we don’t want a gull flapping menacingly above us as we try and eat fish and chips on the Embankment. It puts us off the potentially award-winning food we are eating. I’m sure you would feel the same if you were being stared at by a red-eyed, cawing beast with a beak ready to grab our food and half of our fingers in one greedy grab.
2/ When there’s no food in human hands available, they steal it out of bins. Dartmouth is a popular place and our street cleaning team do a bang up job.
But when it’s bin day some people put out their bags on the street a bit early – and then the gulls pounce. They spread bags of rubbish around the streets, often fighting amongst themselves as they do so. Ever seen a fight outside an all-night takeaway? Well the seagulls are a bit like that, but with sharp beaks and a noise that will be as pleasant as fingernails down a blackboard. All of which is is both rather unsavoury and costly to clear up.
3/The more birds we have around the more, well, bird poo there is around. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that bird poo is not that hygienic. Occurrences of ‘bird poo strike’ when a warm pat on the head is not a good thing, are common in Dartmouth. Which is a bit of a downer, especially when you are trying to eat some award winning fish and chips.
It’s good to note that the people who expound the ‘being poo’d on by a bird is good luck’ are those people who HAVE been poo’d on.
If we all work together, ALL stop feeding the gulls and make sure our rubbish is disposed of properly, then we may, one day, reach a happy point where the seagulls move back to their habitat and the humans are free to enjoy their food without disturbance in this beautiful town we call Dartmouth.
A man can dream can’t he?