I READ with interest Gill Zella Martin’s letter in the Packet on September 2, 2015 2.09.15 with regard to gulls and the quoted "expert advice" on how to deal with them.

I too live in a small road totally taken over by herring gulls all year round and not for "only a few weeks". 

Unfortunately, unlike Gill Zela Martin, I have neighbours who constantly feed herring gulls and so the gulls live their lives and raise their young here. 

This has been going on for years and there is now a complete gull colony in the surrounding area. 

Gulls do not only pose a threat of attack but cause much damage to property and plants and drop filth everywhere. 

Windows, walls, roofs, guttering and vehicles continually have to be cleaned off and cleared of their debris. Unfortunately, too, where there are gulls being fed there are rats – enough said. 

Since herring gulls have been protected what or who is going to protect us and our property? I replaced both a garage roof and a two-storey flat roof at the end of the last year and had gull protection put on the flat roof and bought a reinforced skylight. Gulls attack this protection daily and also ‘hammer’ the skylight begging for food. 

This is continual all year. 

What saddens me is that I love nature but gull feeders have turned the gulls into a total menace. Gulls in my road no longer know how to get their own food – they merely beg continually. 

It is not necessarily like this in other countries; When I visited Newfoundland, a marine biologist took pleasure in pointing out the herring gull colony on Gull Rock off St Johns. There they had no gull problem in the town whatsoever. 

Here, I visit Gyllyngvase Beach regularly and there are fewer gulls to be seen there these days but, on returning to my road, a cacophony of screaming gulls will greet you. 

I’m sure when everyone first heard RSPB representative giving his thoughts on the use of umbrellas as protection, that they laughed in ridicule or disbelief. 

It would be surreal for every adult and child to need to carry an umbrella for protection when continuing their daily activities. 

It would be nonsense. But RSPB representative did say one thing that could be the answer to it all: “We need to stop the human/gull connection.” So, stop local residents feeding gulls. Surely it is that simple? 

If it is a fineable offence to feed gulls in a public place then why not make it an offence on private property? 

It would take time but, together with possible egg culling and the use of gull-proof rubbish sacks, eventually gulls would surely go back to living in their natural habitat and would no longer be thought of as destructive, screeching ‘flying rats’.

Mary Holloway,
Falmouth