We're to blame for gull menace - video (From Worcester News)

We're to blame for gull menace - video

10:00am Thursday 15th July 2010 in Take Pride Headlines By Flora Drury, @floradruryWN #worcsnews

GULLIBLE: Andy Staples of Red Kite Pest Control swaps the gulls’ eggs to fool the birds in order to control the population. (28042205) Buy this photo »

LITTER is not just unappealing on the eye, but draws some of the biggest pests to Worcester.

And the most visible of the pests are the seagulls, which swoop down on every morsel of food they see. The Take Pride in Worcester campaign, launched this week by your Worcester News in conjunction with Worcester City Council and VisitWorcester, wants to highlight what a difference you can make by just putting your rubbish in a bin rather than dropping it on the floor.

Louise Pedersen, of the RSPB, says: “Over the past decades we’ve been seeing more herring and lesser black-backed gulls coming into towns all over the UK, including here in Worcester.

“Whatever we might think of them, they are very intelligent and resourceful, and they are drawn in by the prospects of finding easily available food, including litter. If gulls are a problem for public health, then the most effective measure to discourage gulls from nesting in our towns is to reduce the availability of food from streets and landfill sites, and to make it less attractive for them to nest on roofs by as using physical barriers.”

In Worcester there are 467 nesting pairs of seagulls of which 310 can be found in the city centre, where food is easiest to come by. The job of trying to control the population for the past five years had been done by Andy Staples, owner of Red Kite Pest Control.

And Mr Staples agrees that the ease with which food is available is definitely contributing to the seagull problem.

“They are very adaptable,” he said. “We find all sorts of rubbish up here. Their eyesight is seven times better than ours, so they will see if you drop a chip on the street. It all provides them with food.”

And the roofs of Worcester are proof of this. Among the nests are hundreds of chicken bones – some poached from the landfills, but others clearly left-overs from somebody’s takeaway.

But Mr Staples is working hard to make sure the seagulls, which damage buildings and can become agressive, increase no further. Last year, he managed to reduce the numbers in the city centre humanely by two per cent, by swapping their own eggs with fake ones which he has adapted to look and feel like the real things.

It is the very latest in population control, but requires time and a head for heights – Mr Staples looks after 43 properties and their roofs.

And while Mr Staples is at the cutting edge of seagull population control, residents can help by simply throwing their rubbish in a bin.