Seagulls are the thieves of the skies. Here's how to stop them stealing your food

When you're visiting the seaside, a simple trick could stop seagulls from robbing you of your lunch.

Sitting in the sunshine, enjoying the sea air – you have no idea a thief has its beady eyes on you.

Suddenly, a feathered assailant appears from the sky, blotting out the Sun with its giant wings. In a flurry of flapping and an explosion of fish and chips, the monstrous herring gull steals your dinner right out of your hands. 

Herring gulls, the typical "seagull" of coastal towns across the Northern Hemisphere, are enormous. Weighing in at almost 3.31lb (1.5kg) and with a wingspan of up to 4.9ft (150cm), to have one dive straight at you can be pretty terrifying. But this has become a fairly common seaside occurrence in recent years. 

So, how can you stop seagulls from stealing your food?

This was the question Laura Kelley, an animal behaviour researcher at the University of Exeter, UK, set out to answer. She discovered one simple trick that can keep thieving seagulls at bay. 

In 2019, Kelley set up an experiment to investigate whether herring gulls are more cautious around food when someone is looking directly at them, and found they were slower to approach. Many animals, including gulls, have this tendency for "gaze aversion", she says, as the stare of a predator often indicates imminent attack.

Consequently, some animals have evolved markings – known as eyespots – that resemble eyes, to scare predators away. The more realistic the eyespots, the more effective. Some even have "sparkle markings" to mimic the reflection of the Sun.

Kelley thought her fish and chips might also benefit from the protective power of eyespots – and found sticking a pair of googly eyes on food packaging was enough to deter herring gulls from pinching it. 

Kelley and her team tested the idea in seaside towns across Cornwall, Devon and Dorset in the South West of England, where gulls are known to steal food from people. They gave the birds a choice of two food boxes placed 6.6ft (2m) apart on the ground – one with eyes stuck on, and one plain box.

"We found that gulls were happy to go up to the boxes without eyes," says Kelley. "But with the boxes with eyes, we found the gulls split into two groups. The first group was slightly reticent to approach at the start but became much quicker over subsequent presentations – so they learned that the eyes weren't scary. The other group of gulls just never approached."

This indicates a certain level of personality, says Kelley. Some, she says, are the "problem gulls" that are bold and curious, and more likely to "dive-bomb people for their food".

"They're the ones causing 95% of the mischief," says Kelley. "It's just a small subsection that is giving everyone else a bad name – the bad boys of seagulls."

Herring gulls are at once scavengers, predators and kleptoparasites, meaning they steal food from others. They often find food by watching other animals' behaviour........

© BBC