The herring gull’s haunting cry reminds us of childhood seaside holidays by the beach, or the theme of the long-running BBC radio series Desert Island Discs.
Yet today, you are more likely to hear that memorable sound in our city centres rather than by the sea. Herring gulls have moved into the urban jungle, nesting on the roofs of tall buildings, where they are safe from predators such as foxes, or their marine-dwelling cousin, the great black-backed gull. There is also more food available here than on the coast, where a decline in the fishing industry has made it harder for gulls.
As often happens when birds invade what we think of as “our” space, urban gulls evoke responses ranging from a wary tolerance to outright hostility. Yet spend some time watching them closely, and you will see the kind of intimate behaviour that inspired the pioneering Dutch ornithologist Niko Tinbergen to write his landmark study The Herring Gull’s World – for which, in 1973, he was awarded the Nobel prize.
Surprisingly, perhaps, this familiar species is on the UK red list of threatened birds, because of its rapid decline over the past few decades. Yet down on my coastal patch in Somerset there are still plenty of herring gulls, loafing around on the sandbars as they wait patiently for the tide to drop.
