Sir, – In recent days we have been subjected to a spate of silly season scare stories about seagulls attacking dogs, terrorising sheep in Kerry, diving like Stukas on cross-country ramblers and cyclists and "colonising" entire fields. As the stories got bigger with the telling, imaginations run wild, fuelling even darker fears of the kind explored in Hitchcock's horror movie The Birds. Demands for culls have been doing the rounds on social media and in thousands of texts criss-crossing the land.
Let’s not get carried away by anti-gull hysteria. This breathtakingly beautiful creature is part of the fabric of the planet’s avian environment, a graceful bird that occupies a special place in the literature and folklore of many island nations. Gulls add a musical resonance to a walk along a coastline or the country roads a little further inland. The seas and oceans of the world would be dull indeed without them. In Ireland they are a protected species and that status should not be altered in the slightest. Bird-brained calls for culls are motivated by ignorance of their intrinsic value to the ecosystem, their remarkable intelligence and highly evolved social structures.
Members of the Oireachtas are entitled to their views, but let’s not rush to judgment and scapegoat our feathered, if occasionally strident, friends. We’ve been gulled by politicians for long enough in this country! – Yours, etc,
JOHN FITZGERALD,
Callan, Co Kilkenny.