The gulls are out of control and are becoming very aggressive, swooping down to take pasties, sandwiches and ice creams off visitors and children, leaving the youngsters traumatised.

Who hasn’t seen an unsuspecting visitor or child lose their lunch or an ice-cream to a gull on the waterfront?

Please don’t say the “gulls were here first” because 50 years ago there were just a few, not the vast numbers now running aerial riot with their terrible habits and faeces contaminated with campylobacter and salmonella which they spread to us.

Surely we could adapt a drone to pinch an egg from each nest and cut the numbers down in such a way.

I am not for destroying them but I am for culling their numbers as they are almost a sub-species compared to the thinner gulls that live out on the coast in the time-honoured natural manner who don’t have overdeveloped necks for ripping open bin sacks and even now the seagull-proof sacks.

The other thing that they are doing is, together with their chicks, sliding down roofs made of compressed asbestos tiles.These are safe went left alone but causing asbestos dust to be released into the air can and does cause cancer.

It would helpful if the bins were being emptied more frequently and not overflowing as they so often are at this time of year.

And where does all the rubbish that the gulls tip out go? It blows into the river and then on to the sea, contributing to the mountains of plastic in the oceans.

Kevin Pyne

Lake Street, Dartmouth