Gullageddon

A Bird's Eye View of St Andrews' Seagull Problem

One gull encounter left a first-year with a “scar”; local shops have pleaded with the University to conduct seagull research; East Sands’ Cheesy Toast Shack has sold £5000 worth of ‘seagull insurance’ since they launched the service in September. How scared of St Andrews’ seagulls should you be? 

If you ask students this, you’ll get a barrage of harrowing tales about the feathered fiends. After hearing my fill of scary stories, I felt we should go back to this town’s medieval roots and tote around a sword to swipe at the “evil food stealers.” 

How seriously should we be taking Gullageddon? I talked to ornithologist Professor Will Cresswell, St Andrew’s very own birdman, to find out.

In 2017, the businesses of St Andrews asked the University for help after they complained of gulls disrupting their customers — that's how Grania Smith, one of Cresswell’s students, ended up spending her summer monitoring Market Street’s seagulls. As Smith stood clipboard-at-the-ready watching for signs of imminent seagull attacks, she heard “loads of gull stories” from passersby — but only witnessed fowl play once every three or four hours. 

Seagull encounters are most common in places where people often sit for lunch, like Market Street. Despite clear signs directing them not to feed the gulls, “they chuck a chip out and they train up the gulls to expect it,” Cresswell says. “So, is it actually surprising that these trained gulls, every so often… come down and get it [themselves]?”

With this in mind, the gulls’ thievery might not seem surprising, but it sure is shocking if you’re the one to get your croissant whisked away. First-year Greer Walby was robbed by gulls last Wednesday and is still stunned by the incident. 

After a long day in the main library, Walby got a hard-earned cookie from Northpoint Cafe and took a stroll along The Scores. But, as she reached the statue of Tom Morris, she heard a mysterious flapping. “All of a sudden I see this seagull following me [...] then he gets really close to my head, and I’m like, what the hell?” Several other gulls began to crowd around her. “All of them start[ed] to close in on me, and I was like, oh my god, they’re attacking me!” Walby started running, but there was an “actual swarm” following her. She threw back her cookie to try to placate the onslaught and ran all the way down to the golf course.  

Hearing stories like Walby’s, it’s easy to paint gulls as villains. Cresswell has a different take, though. “They’re very successful […] They’re exploiting the habitat and the rubbish we leave behind, and then what do we do? We don’t pat them on the back of the wings and say well done, we go ‘Oh my god!’”

Cresswell thinks St Andrews’ relationship with seagulls is a good example of a larger reckoning between humans and nature. “It’s the human condition to complain about animals when they have characteristics that are just a tiny bit like ourselves, [...] and I get very frustrated with people that are manifesting some part of human failure of character […] [as] a problem with gulls.” 

“People have no appreciation of risk,” Cresswell added — which makes bird attacks loom larger in the public mind than they do in reality. For example, Kate Carter-Larg of the Cheesy Toast Shack said that they’ve only had about fifty claims made on their seagull insurance, despite five grand worth of sales. “It’s really not like gullageddon out there,” said Cresswell. “I suspect that what we have in St Andrews is.. a [small] number of super specialist gulls that were fed as youngsters [...] clearly, if there was a massive problem, everybody would be being attacked all of the time.”

However, that doesn’t stop former victims of the gulls from holding a grudge. “Honestly, it kind of spurred a hatred in me for birds in general,” said Walby. After her experience with gulls, Walby now declares that she doesn’t like any birds — especially seagulls. “I’m all for conservation and animals and protecting them, but why do you have to come for me? Not a fan of seagulls, not a fan of the people that feed them.”

Her final sentiment, at least, is one Cresswell can wholeheartedly agree with. “They’re career criminals, but we created them,” he said. “That’s not fair at all… they’re just being like humans, really.”

“The gulls are here, and yes they can cause a problem, but what do you do? …do you go out and shoot them? No, you go and educate them! You try to give them something more meaningful,” he said. If no one fed the gulls, there wouldn't be a problem. Live and let live, Cresswell advises. “It tells you more about people than anything… they want somebody to blame or to complain at. I guess maybe it’s a good thing they’re going at seagulls because if they weren’t going at seagulls they’d be aiming at sectors of human society.” 

Regardless, Walby’s newfound fear of seagulls isn’t going anywhere. “I mean, I love animals, but birds, I don’t really f**k with you.”

Illustration by Isabella Abbott