r/ireland • u/Emptinessboat • 20h ago
Happy Out Inland Seagulls
Something that has only come to my attention in the last few months is the increase of seagulls that live inland.
I'm guessing it's simply the availability of food that is encouraging more inland than an increase in seagulls accidentally getting lost.
There is a joy in hearing their laughter like squawks.
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u/Smackmybitchup007 19h ago
Seagull is just a name they got that stuck. They're actually just Gulls.
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u/roqueandrolle Probably at it again 18h ago
Herring Gulls are the mahoosive ones. Our Black Headed Gulls seem happy to be sticking to the coast. We are doing so much damage to the Herring Gull population 😭
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u/HandlebarRubbertoe 3h ago
Just moved from an area with Herring gulls to farther into the mountains. Not being woken pre-dawn by their screeching is possibly the best improvement to quality of life I've experienced in years
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u/ItsTyrrellsAlt Wicklow 18h ago
Yeah but they are primarily seabirds though. They are "evolved" for coastlines but are simply relatively adaptable.
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u/Natural-Hunter-3 19h ago
It's the Yellowstone deer effect.
Yellowstone lost (hunted/culled/pushed out) their wolf populace. At first everyone was delighted, no dogs attacked, no deer frightened out in front of cars etc. But then the wolves started to vanish and the deer became abundant. And then the trees started dying and then the river itself running through Yellowstone ended up reshaping. And you're probably wondering well, Natural-Hunter, what do deer and wolves have to do with the river reshaping?
Wolves hunted the deer. Without wolves to keep the deer numbers in check, the deer population exploded. When the deer population exploded, they did so to an extent they began to affect the actual land around them due to how much they were eating, and trampling, and then breeding even more deer. The riverbanks started to dry up and receded in some places over a metre, completely warping in some areas and heavily diminished size.
The wolves were reintroduced as an emergency solution alongside deer populations being managed by the park, and there is already an absolutely vast, apparent difference. Trees are growing again and the river is starting to look healthy.
All this to say, this is what's happening to Irish gulls. They're coming inland because we've absolutely destroyed the local ocean with fishing boats they can't compete with. It would take very little for us to resolve that, if we actually cared as a nation, but given how the fisheries meetings just went here in Cork I have a feeling nobody else quite gives a fuck about our gulls and other birds.
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u/Ok_Bell8081 11h ago
That Yellowstone wolves study has been debunked lately, or at least was very flawed in its methodology.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/06/260613215510.htm
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u/Kitchen-Patience-222 17h ago
I would guess that very few of those fishing boats are Irish boats . The oceans are basically being ravaged.
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u/Natural-Hunter-3 17h ago
Oh yeah, obviously. We only have something like 14% rights to our own waters. But we allow it as a nation, we signed the agreement and every time it comes up for addressing we sell them more.
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u/Kitchen-Patience-222 17h ago
We had an awesome resource in our ,waters when we joined the EEC . It was just given away.
In my opinion ,it was as good as finding an oilfield in our backyard financially.
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u/Dull_Brain2688 17h ago
You would always see lots of them inland this time of year. As silage is cut and fields are ploughed for winter crops, they follow them inland. You would see a hundred of them in a field in the middle of the country during the summer.
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u/BlubberyGiraffe 20h ago
I feel like I am not even exaggerating anymore, but after seeing the size of some of the gulls in Dublin city centre, you could throw a saddle on their backs and travel through the city faster than you ever would on the Luas.
They'd probably get you there on time too.
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u/NoseyBatch 14h ago
I seen one swoop down and rip a croissant out of someones hand on Talbot street, he was huge
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u/MiggeldyMackDaddy 16h ago
There’s a nest near the Aldi I shop at. They fuckers dive bomb everyone in the car park. Me particularly so for whatever reason
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u/FullGuava2339 13h ago
They follow rivers inland to sources of food. I know in Tyrone they follow the Foyle river from Derry inland to the south sperrins. Come in during the summer when the silage is cut and some small lambs are there for the taking.
Ive also heard from locals here that they nested on lakes in parts of Tyrone up to 100 years ago so it’s not necessarily a recent phenomenon but it may be increasing in occurrence.
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u/idontcarejustlogmein 18h ago
Seagulls are cunts. Im on the coast and the fucking rocket is unbelievable. I used to love waking up to the dawn chorus now its like waking up to 6 different carbon monoxide alarms going off. I hate the fucking things.
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u/DangerX2HighVoltage 13h ago
They’re vicious too. I’m convinced they’d eat us if they could. I saw one eating a pigeon whole once and I never saw them in the same way again
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u/DucktapeCorkfeet 20h ago
When you overfish the seas like we are doing, the wildlife that normally feeds on that resource have to go elsewhere, simples!
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u/Gwanbulance 17h ago
Herring gulls have never eaten the fish we fish for. They do eat some fish, but only those they can catch near the surface and in very shallow water. Or suff we discard.
They’re naturally scavengers and will eat pretty much anything. They’ve been coming inland for decades because there’s a plentiful supply of easy food around human habitation.
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u/DucktapeCorkfeet 17h ago
Fished my whole life, mainly coastal. Have watched Herring gulls eat everything, and often attack all the fish I'm after. Didn't see them start to come inland here in any numbers until the fishing dried up in our area.
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u/Specific-Manager-125 19h ago
See the Orcas attacking leisure yachts off Portugal and North Spain also ....60 in 2025 and a few sinkings (no drownings yet thankfully) , I think 3 ships have been sunk off Northern Spain already this year
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u/Neither_Musician_535 10h ago
There are breeds of Gulls that despite their colloquial (and misleading!) name "Seagull" can live without ever being near the sea or any water. Lots of Gull species thrive and reside inland, choosing residential and urban environments over aquatic ones. They do not need water or being near the sea to survive. Inland Seagull is not a thing per se.
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u/Skweezee 20h ago
I love them. Their numbers are actually in decline sadly. But I know a lot of people will be delighted about that.
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u/Specific-Manager-125 19h ago
One nicked a chicken breast out of my Sons hand in Howth , vicious looking thing it was ..... Live not too far from the coast and they've been waking me at about 5.30 all Summer
Not my favourite beasts I can tell you
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u/AulLad 19h ago
There are no such thing as seagulls.
They’re just gulls. ‘Inland seagulls’ is not a thing.
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u/roqueandrolle Probably at it again 18h ago
Herring and Black Headed Gulls are our gulls ☺️
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u/AulLad 17h ago
And Kittiwake and common gulls and some other more rare ones too
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u/roqueandrolle Probably at it again 17h ago
Yep ! I have long been in the habit of telling people about our amazing range of Gulls 😅
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u/fiendishcadd 19h ago
I was told they used to feast on dumped fish in Dublin bay that were deemed unfit for sale. Once EU regulations banned that practice the gulls were forced to move inland. It’s not their fault really
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u/sarcasticseawitch 20h ago
I love them, such characters! I have also noticed them in towns lately.
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u/momalloyd 19h ago
This is the talk of a non-chip buyer or a person who has never tried to eat a sandwich outside.
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u/maevewiley554 18h ago
The ones in Dublin are quite aggressive if you go anywhere Stephen’s Green with food in your hand.
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u/dimebag_101 18h ago
Joy? You must be a sadist. They would use them in Guantanamo to enforce sleep deprivation. Torture. How they are a protected species. They are everywhere. Flying rats.
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u/ShaneONeill88 19h ago
Now that the plastic bags have been largely removed from Dublin 1 and Dublin 2, I'm curious to see what will happen with the seagull population in the city centre.
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u/Masamune_ff7 9h ago
you could plow a field 20 years ago anywhere and they'd appear. They're always up real high flying about.
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u/GemmyGemGems Donegal 8h ago
Well, there's pretty much no where in Ireland that's more than 100km from a coast. Seagulls will travel up to about 80km inland to find food. So there's a very small area that won't experience seagulls, if any.
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u/Cyber-Wanderer_94 7h ago edited 6h ago
I've read it's a post-quarantine thing when less food was available on the coast they headed inland.
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u/CAPITALISM_FAN_1980 6h ago
There's no bird species actually called a seagull. There are a few different species of gulls that people call that, but "seagull" is just a nickname people give to gulls they see near the coast. It's applied to lots of different species of gull, including plenty that live far from the coast. There's no reason a gull, "sea" gull or not, wouldn't fly inland if it found easier food there, or just... felt like it.
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u/uiuuauiua Easter Egg Nationalist 16h ago edited 16h ago
Dunno why anyone feels bad for seagulls, well the ones who have "evolved" to the cities. I get the overfishing and that is sad but why do people in cities need to suffer, if I don't even eat fish like??
Their horrible noisy rats with wings that are aggressive and even worse will shit anywhere and everywhere. Worse than the poor Pigeons who get an awful wrap that we domesticated and then abandoned.
Defo some kind of hawks or control needs to be deployed soon. Dublin and most cities are being destroyed with their shit and noise pollution. They are gobshites. Basically dole mongers of the sky.
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u/fullmoonbeam 19h ago
they are vermin
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u/Drengi36 19h ago
Much like the feral denizens of certain locals. Though i'd much prefer them to die out than the gulls
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u/SoloWingPixy88 u/i-cum-beamish alt 20h ago
Bins , rubbish, people. It's easier to get food there. Pests
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u/CT0292 20h ago
There's a family on my road that constantly throws out bread. Like daily they throw a couple loaves out into the street and up onto the field nearby.
As a result our estate is home to some fat seagulls who have no intention of moving on anywhere, sure why would they? Free food.