To be scared of a seagull?

[cariadlet]

It sounds ridiculous, and typing that I decided I must BU.

Every year we have seagulls nesting on our roof. On two previous years one of the chicks has fallen down the chimney and landed in the fireplace. Each time I've grabbed it and put it out in the back garden. Each time the over protective parents have dive bombed me as I've gone out.

The first time it happened the parent seagulls panicked so much that they made distress calls and we had dozens of seagulls circling over our garden. It was like a scene from "The Birds".

Last night or this morning a chick either fell off the roof or tried flying and didn't get very far. It's been wandering around the patio and up and down the side path with one of the parents standing guard (either on the conservatory roof or the shed roof - wherever it gets the best view of the chick).

I know it's stupid, but I feel nervous about just going out into my own garden and am dreading having to walk down the front path when I have to go out later in case the chick is wandered off that way and the adults see me coming out.

That's awful. Is there anybody you can call like the RSPCA that could put it out of its misery using sleeping gas or something?
I could not stay and listen to it wasting away...in spite of the grownups being called all the names under the sun here.

Cariad, I've only read the bit since your last post so forgive me if I've missed anything, but could you call someone to take off the gas fire and let out the chick? It will just die otherwise.

Then get someone (possibly same person) to fit a cover on top of your chimney outlet so it doesn't happen again.

We had a lot of baby seagulls fall off our old roof into the garden and they usually died quite quickly at the hands of a fox or a fast car but at least they didn't spend several days slowly starving to death. I couldn't live with myself if I let that happen to a creature.

Btw it won't take a minute for a gas engineer to take the fire off the wall. Don't do it yourself in case you cause a gas leak. (unless you have done it before and it's safe to do so without risk to the gas pipe)

I knew someone who heard noises behind gas fire, had it taken off and there was an owl blinking at them.

There you go, you might discover an eagle or a budgie or one of those birds out of Jason and the Argonauts

Seriously though seagull babies don't cheep do they? More of a bloody racket than a cheep! but ours tend to be older - the leaping-in-the-air while trying to fly type.

We call them gucks, as ds2 used to think they were ducks and it just seemed to fit. Baby gull = guck.

www.gloucestershireecho.co.uk/Government-decision-scrap-250k-study-aggressive/story-26716099-detail/story.html
Saw a little boy being pecked on the beach years ago because he was holding a bag of chips. One child lost an eye at Hastings a few years ago. Another man was arrested for trying to shoot them and around the same time I remember hearing on R4 that a specialist was warning they are a far worse threat than foxes because they are an unknown quantity - no one is researching them and funding is being cut despite their growing numbers and growing aggression.
Sod the zombies, it could be a seagull apocalypse!

Haven't been able to do anything about the trapped chick yet - DP had to leave for work at 7 and I left at 7.15 (on lunch break now).

DP has a friend who might be able to get the gas fire off for us safely (not gas engineer, but plumber and builder). If he doesn't feel able to touch it, I'll ask my parents for the phone number of the gas engineer who recently checked their gas fire for them when they moved house (into my area).

It was horrible to hear the squawking of the first frightened chick when the fox got it, but that was over pretty quickly. We won't leave this one to starve to death. Just hope we can get it sorted quickly.

Several winters ago there was one standing in the snow on top of my car first thing in the morning.
Drove to work and parked car. Snow melted. Chicken carcass on my roof (someone had had a chicken supper from the chip shop I presume)

I'm so glad to hear that OP. Thank you from me

You lookin' at me?

PS - that's not Sam!

I grew up in a seaside town and when I was about 11 we moved to a house with herring gulls nesting on the roof. It was my job to deal with the young gulls when they fell down onto our patio. I'd catch them in a towel, carry them up through the house and post them through the skylight back onto the roof. One of them went for my face once and cut my cheek open - I was a lot more careful with them after that.

I love gulls of all species but have a particular fondness for herring gulls - they're beautiful, resourceful, clever and very tender towards their mates and chicks. I can see that they can be annoying but they are only wild animals trying to survive and lead their lives - they just happen to be able to do this in urban environments where most wildlife can't survive at all. (And we help the gulls by providing them with homes and food!) Even so, overall their numbers are falling in the UK (they are a species of conservation concern, red-listed by the RSPB etc).

Good luck with the chick stuck behind the fire, OP :)

Gerund when called on numerous occasions by myself and neighbours over the last few years the RSPB have had no interest at all in the chicks that fall off the rooftops around here, they just say to let nature take its course ie let cats/foxes have them

sleepwhenidie Same here. When we moved here 15 years ago we were clueless about the chicks wandering about, getting run over etc. They also told us to leave well alone. We still tried to help one sitting in the gutter on our road, gasping during an unusually hot week. We left little pots of water out etc. and the chick perked up enough to fly away eventually.

Yep, RSPB doesn't do individual wildlife rescues and never has, they are about large-scale conservation. If the RSPCA won't help, there may be a local rescue that can - link to a list here.

PS. Our neighbours' cat was too scared to touch a chick in our garden! Think she paid for it previously with being attacked by the parents... Either that or the cat is so monumentally stupid that she didn't realise this was lunch wrapped in feathers. (She's not the brightest cat on the block )

YANBU.

We have magpies that attack us during breeding season - they divebomb people who get too close. It's a well-known phenomenon in Australia, the magpies are fecking vicious - I've been attacked by one at a roadside rest stop, but not in our garden luckily - a friend of mine can't go outside her back door sometimes without being attacked! One of the ways round it is to wear helmets with cable ties sticking out, to keep the birds further away - don't know if that would work! Children sometimes put boxes or crates over their heads for protection as well.

Seagulls are pretty intimidating! Sad about the chick that got taken by the fox, and hope you can get the one out from behind your gas fire before it dies.

Herring gulls can stand up to 67 cm tall (says google). That's halfway up my thigh and seems about right from the ones that have kept me away from my garden and on one notable occasion prevented me from using my car because one sat on it and refused to let me go near. They are not flying rats (that's pigeons), they are flying...er, cats, dogs, foxes?

"Humans are far worse, the gulls are just trying to survive." Toughasoldboots Are you a seagull in disguise?

Well I've run the gauntlet dodging dive bombing adult gulls and putting water out for chicks that have landed in the garden and even shot foxes stalking them with water pistols in the past and it was distressing to hear the cheeping but sorry, ripping down a wall in my house to get at a seagull chick (that would probably then end up with a whole second layer of stress before death at the jaws of the foxes in the garden - we couldn't possibly get one back on the roof of our house, it's four storeys high) was a step too far . I hope you get your fire off easily cariad - and have a good plan of what to do next!

DP was worried about the chick so he finished work early and he managed to disconnect the gas fire and pull it off the wall himself. It wasn't our imagination - there was a chick there.

I've now put the chick in the conservatory as it should be easier to clean up after it in there (as long as it craps on the floor and not the furniture). I've given it some dog food (which it's eaten) and a bowl of water.

We're both a bit worried about it. In previous years, the chicks that have come down have been almost the size of adults and have stood a fighting chance of surviving. This one, and its sibling that the fox took on Sunday, are both smaller. It looks really young - it even has a lot of its downy feathers still. Even if we put it up on the shed roof, I don't think it would last long. Plus, one of it's wings is hanging down so it might have hurt itself during the fall.

I've phoned a local wildlife rescue charity, have left a message on their answerphone and am waiting to hear back. I wouldn't normally bother them for a seagull chick, but this one seems a bit vulnerable.

Cat food or dog food is a great idea. If the chick is still downy you may need to tempt it to eat, you can try just dipping its beak gently into the food, or tapping on the side of the dish, like a pecking bird. Perhaps the parent birds have been killed? Hanging wings can be broken or sprained, hopefully it isn't broken, but a wildlife centre or a vet would be able to tell you. Where in the country are you?

SirVixofVixHall, the chick's had some of the dog food. It's tucked up in a corner and doesn't look stressed (don't know how I'd tell if it was, but it's alert without being agitated).

The parents are definitely about - still on the roof. I do feel sorry for them (even though they scare me to death). The fox ate one of their chicks and now we've got the other one.

We're in Sussex. We're still waiting for a call back from the wildlife charity. I can't remember their name off-hand (DP made the call). They helped us out a few years ago by giving us some medicine for the fox we used to feed after it appeared one day with a horrendous injury on its back.

When I left the message I did say that I know that they must have hundreds of calls about seagull chicks falling off roofs, that we usually leave them in the garden and wouldn't ring for an older chick or for one that appeared uninjured.