A hot day, just for a change, so I’m off out into the garden to enjoy the sunshine. Somewhat surprisingly, next to the strawberries, a small grey fluffy thing is looking at me, slightly anxiously. After studying each other for a while, it is clear that a baby gull has mistakenly dropped in, literally! A quick consultation of the RSPCA website advises me to leave it well alone … observe from a distance … and allow the parents to come down and take charge of the situation. After a while, no sign of parents and it’s late afternoon, so I usher my new friend out into an open area so that it can call (which it does) for parental assistance.
The next morning, no sign of it, so feeling rather guilty that I had caused it to be eaten by something during the night, I resume normal life and go off into town. Returning after lunch, my friend is back, looking rather lost and (though I may have been imagining it) hungry. I give it a bowl of water, accepted gratefully, and a strawberry, rejected, and we resume our wary observation of each other. The next thing I know it plops happily into the water bowl and sits there, looking around expectantly for parental care. There are plenty of gulls calling and flying around, this is Rye of course, but no interest in my friend.
Back to the RSPCA who now recommend (after 24 hours) to call a local rescue centre, which for us is of course Mallydams. A very helpful person recommends further observation and then calling again if nothing happens. Nothing does happen, other than a bit of calling and water bowl splashing, so another call results in two delightful people appearing with a box, containing another rescued chick. After scanning the roofs around and confirming that it certainly wasn’t going to survive on its own, off it went to be assessed.
They told me that it would be fed until it could survive on its own and then be released in the rock pools near Pett, along with the 96 other chicks (so far) that have been rescued from Rye and the surrounding area.
It looks like gulls need parenting skill classes, steep, slidy roofs are perhaps not the best cots or playpens!
Image Credits: Peter Connock .