The seaside town I live in has a large population of herring gulls, which nationally, are in decline. During the summer months, they terrorise the visitors on whom the local economy largely depends, by swooping down to snatch fish and chips and ice cream out of their hands. There are signs all along the sea front asking people not to feed them. Every summer, there is a rash of letters in the local papers, from local people wanting them culled, and replies on the lines of: "Not permitted as they're a protected species; if you don't like gulls, don't live near the sea." My sympathies are with the second lot.
But .... now that their usual seafront diet has disappeared, and they have young to feed, they are making a nuisance of themselves around our homes and gardens, trying to get at the food lots of us put out for smaller birds, making a terrific din, and bashing at the windows if they see us sitting indoors. To begin with, I took pity on them and put out some table scraps, well away from the bird feeders. Not for long: after a couple of days, I couldn't step outside without half a dozen of them descending and squawking their beaks off at me.
Back in the mists of time when I was able to look after my grandson I used to take him to the park to feed the ducks as he loves all animals. It was carnage once the gulls realised we had grain and I was too worried to do it often as he is only 3.
Several times we saw people actually feeding them!
"The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it." Sir Terry Pratchett
Best idea @debs64 ... enjoy watching and learning about their natural behaviour ... every time we interfere we're teaching them to modify their behaviour and that's not in their best interests, or ours.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Never feed foxes, for all the reasons above, Doves, especially, there’s a big difference in the way townsfolk think about wild animals to how we think in the country. In a way I can understand it, what’s commonplace for us is a rare sight for some in towns. I remember many years ago when my children were small, they’d never seen a badger, we saw a dead one, intact, on the road verge and we stopped to show them. We now have a set just down in the field here.
Seagulls!,😱 daughter lives near Charlestown, on rubbish day its a nightmare for them, they have to put bed sheets right over the bins, she can’t take her kids out for fear of them swooping, they can do a lot of damage to babies. A friend who lives in Cheltenham said they got so bad the council were feeding them with seed with a fertility inhibitor hoping they wouldn’t breed anymore. I think they used similar with the pigeons in London.
Gardening on the wild, windy west side of Dartmoor.
I agree @Lyn ... folk who live or grew up in towns do think about wildlife and how the natural world works differently to those of us who grew up in the countryside ... but that’s why education about the natural world is so important ... the countryside is not a Petting Zoo, despite some folk wishing it was (not referring to anyone here I hasten to add).
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
I'm intrigued by the comments above on the lines of "don't feed anything; leave wildlife to take care of itself; don't intervene". Too late, I'm afraid. We intervened when we started building cities and roads and airports, when we diverted rivers to irrigate our farms, when we domesticated some animals and hunted others to extinction, cut down forests, heated the sky ...... you get my drift?
So, do you want to call a halt to all the captive breeding and other conservation programmes that are trying to preserve endangered species and a bit of wilderness for them to live in? Repeal CITES? Let the poachers go after the rhino horns and ivory and pangolin scales? Shall we all fill in and plant up our wildlife ponds, and cancel our RSPB subs?
In much of the developed world, wildlife lives in cities and towns because we've left them hardly anywhere else. What little countryside we've left them isn't all that safe, thanks to the chemicals sprayed around by farmers; and I'm not blaming them, they are business people who naturally want the highest return for the least investment. Flocks of birds roost in cities because the air temperature is a couple of degrees warmer than in the surrounding country.
So I shall carry on feeding birds in my garden, I'll keep my woodpile and hedgehog house, and maintain my abstinence from herbicides, pesticides and all other 'cides.
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But .... now that their usual seafront diet has disappeared, and they have young to feed, they are making a nuisance of themselves around our homes and gardens, trying to get at the food lots of us put out for smaller birds, making a terrific din, and bashing at the windows if they see us sitting indoors. To begin with, I took pity on them and put out some table scraps, well away from the bird feeders. Not for long: after a couple of days, I couldn't step outside without half a dozen of them descending and squawking their beaks off at me.
Several times we saw people actually feeding them!
Bizarre.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
In a way I can understand it, what’s commonplace for us is a rare sight for some in towns.
I remember many years ago when my children were small, they’d never seen a badger, we saw a dead one, intact, on the road verge and we stopped to show them.
We now have a set just down in the field here.
Seagulls!,😱 daughter lives near Charlestown, on rubbish day its a nightmare for them, they have to put bed sheets right over the bins, she can’t take her kids out for fear of them swooping, they can do a lot of damage to babies.
A friend who lives in Cheltenham said they got so bad the council were feeding them with seed with a fertility inhibitor hoping they wouldn’t breed anymore. I think they used similar with the pigeons in London.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
So, do you want to call a halt to all the captive breeding and other conservation programmes that are trying to preserve endangered species and a bit of wilderness for them to live in? Repeal CITES? Let the poachers go after the rhino horns and ivory and pangolin scales? Shall we all fill in and plant up our wildlife ponds, and cancel our RSPB subs?
In much of the developed world, wildlife lives in cities and towns because we've left them hardly anywhere else. What little countryside we've left them isn't all that safe, thanks to the chemicals sprayed around by farmers; and I'm not blaming them, they are business people who naturally want the highest return for the least investment. Flocks of birds roost in cities because the air temperature is a couple of degrees warmer than in the surrounding country.
So I shall carry on feeding birds in my garden, I'll keep my woodpile and hedgehog house, and maintain my abstinence from herbicides, pesticides and all other 'cides.