Vera de Carolis, of Lake Street, Dartmouth, writes:

In response to your picture pages depicting ‘the beauty of the South Hams’, may we think for a moment not of ‘darkest Africa’ and Cecil the lion, but of ‘darkest Dartmouth’?

Regularly I am woken at dawn, between 4am and 4.30am, with the screams and cries of terrified birds of all denominations who are trying to beat death, which lurks above them in the form of the ‘vultures’ sent to trap them and supposedly cull the seagulls.

I cannot imagine who came up with this shocking idea – pretty Dartmouth reduced to a killing field.

Birds are wonderful creatures and are culled naturally by ­accidents and declines in ­populations.

Let us rest in peace without this horrific sound of suffering so that we may hear again

the chirping of garden birds, pigeons and the seagulls,

which are such a part of this landscape.