XL gullies: how birds ‘as big as turkeys’ took over Britain | Birds

Name: XL gullies.

Age: First identified in March.

Appearance: Winged and dangerous.

Not more irresponsible dog breeding … wait, did you say “winged”? That’s right. XL gullies are “Britain’s HARDEST seagulls”.

“Britain’s hardest seagulls” should be a Ross Kemp show. Indeed; there is genuine drama to this story. A new breed of seagull is terrorising the country.

There’s no such thing as a seagull. OK, smartypants. We’re mainly talking about herring gulls. Britons believe they are getting bolder, fiercer and more successful at stealing our snacks. See, for instance, reports of a “jacked-up gargantuan”, “top-level boss” gull operating out of Liverpool city centre.

Yikes. How exactly is it operating? Carrying out laser-focused smash-and-grab attacks on people’s snacks (Greggs is reportedly its favourite).

Give me more incidents of gull crime. With pleasure. For a deep-dive report, the Daily Mail sent journalists to Margate in Kent and St Ives in Cornwall to walk around with chips and see what happened.

And what happened? Gulls ate their chips.

Astonishing. Are those towns chip-theft hotspots? No, XL gullies are everywhere. Reddit users have been comparing notes on no-go zones. Aberdeen gulls are “psychotic” and “absolutely ruthless”; mid-Wales ones are “pure evil”; Tenby gulls are “as big as turkeys”; Rhyl gulls “need Asbos”; and Cornish gulls are “pterodactyls”.

This is like a sinister avian version of the Beach Boys’ California Girls. Especially the “They knock me out when I’m down there” bit. (Southern gulls are “more willing to approach people”, according to preliminary results from a recent study by the universities of Glasgow and Plymouth.)

Are gulls actually violent? Not unless they’re defending their chicks. There are occasionally reports of minor injuries when they swoop to steal food – but it’s definitely chips they want, not blood.

It may not be a balanced diet, but isn’t this expected gull behaviour? Absolutely – and it’s our own fault. Gulls are “very intelligent … opportunistic and extremely adaptable”, according to the naturalist Dominic Couzens. Since people discard so much food, the gulls have altered their foraging strategies, including by helping themselves. It’s not crime, but rather “kleptoparasitism”.

Can anything be done? You can grass up gulls to various councils, or report interactions to researchers via Glasgow and Plymouth’s Gull’s Eye app. Liverpool has recently deployed a Harris hawk to try to deter the top-level boss and his capos. But like all wild birds, herring gulls are protected – their number is declining – so any retaliation against them is illegal. The best thing to do is stay out of their way (especially when eating chips).

Do say: “Increasing overlap between anthropogenic landscapes and wildlife habitats has given rise to more human-wildlife conflicts.”

Don’t say: “I wish they all could be California gulls.”