Dive bombing seagulls in Devon

[Mrs Fish]

ananova said:

Helmets deflect seagull attacks Workers at a Devon council have been issued with crash helmets - to protect them from dive-bombing seagulls. Flocks of seagulls have been attacking staff who collect weather data from the roof of council offices in Newton Abbot. One victim, David Potter, said: "It can be really bad and it's getting worse. It is my fourth year doing the job and there are more and more gulls. "The big gulls swoop at my head and are backed up by half a dozen others which scream and dive-bomb me. "It's very distressing but at least we now have crash helmets to protect s from being pecked about the head and face." The data is collected every day and is used by the Met Office as part of its national record-keeping and weather forecasting. A Teignbridge District Council spokesman said the helmets were issued as a security measure to staff.

[Prof Beard]

When I lived in Devon, gulls were called "shite-hawks". I remember my Dad sitting at the traffic lights in Brixham in his Herald 12/50 with the sunshine roof open when such an avian st with supreme accuracy onto the top of his gear-nob - just as the lights changed! He then knew what a dilemma was....

[Mrs Fish]

[philthy]

I live in the Teignbridge area, might I suggest a piece of lead travelling at several hundred feet a second through the birds cranium will alleviate the problem?

Works for me !

Phil

[DennisTheMenace]

feed them some baking soda , they love it

[pstruck]

DennisTheMenace said:

feed them some baking soda , they love it

This is indeed an excellent solution to the problem of booming gull populations. Just don't stand to close to witness the effect of the explosive treat!

[sadako]

One of the places I have worked, a large antibiotic packing plant, had a problem with seagulls whenever they needed to send engineers to work on something on the roof. They actually had to get someone to write a health and safety guide for anyone accessing the roof after a seagull knocked some poor sod off it and he lost some teeth on a guard rail. The guide included stating that people had to go fectionaup on the roof in pairs, carrying planks of wood of certain dimentions that later became affectionatly known as "Seagull Bats" with which to fend them off. The guy who wrote this document, as you can imagine, got alot of stick for this from his coworkers. Apparently when he left a year or so later his going away party featured people walking around with these seagull bats covered in fake blood and feathers, and someone gave him a baseball cap with "seagull sh*t deflector" printed on it...

>> Edited by sadako on Saturday 26th November 21:16

[jmorgan]

The joys of working on roof tops near the sea. We just used to be quick about it. They are even worse when a chick is around.

[groucho]

I work on roof tops and live on the coast. Just ignore them and they will stop. The only time they get a little agressive is when they have young.