Now, he estimates there are 2,500 pairs, with 2,900 pairs in nearby Gloucester and 3,200 pairs in Cardiff.Įven cities far inland are now home to gulls. Rock, who is also a member of the international Gull Research Organisation, recalls that in 1980, when he was first starting out studying the birds, there were around 100 pairs in the city. The birds were first recorded to be nesting in Bristol, for example, in 1972. Gulls have been residents of cities and towns for decades. Their relentless noise and the mess they create has also drawn much ire from the local humans who live alongside them. The tabloid press in the UK has depicted gulls as public enemies for incidents of birds dive-bombing pedestrians, either to defend their young or to snatch meals straight from the hands of unwary tourists. They are not even birds," says Peter Rock, a leading urban gull expert in Bristol, UK, who has studied the two most common urban gull species there for decades: herring gulls and lesser black-backed gulls. "Even my birdwatching friends used to say, why do you want to study gulls. As a result, urban gull colonies are taking off in Europe, and elsewhere.īut like many other species that have adopted urban areas as their homes – rats, pigeons, foxes – gulls have something of an image problem. There is also often no shortage of food on the streets below. Nesting there brings a number of advantages – it helps to keep them safe as fewer predators tend to prowl around human architecture. From a gull's eye view, our cities and towns are a series of rooftop islands surrounded by steep cliffs.
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