Attack of the birds: rising number of people injured by seagulls on Britain's coast

It sounds like a scene by Hitchcock.

But medics are warning of a rise in patients being treated for injuries after attacks by swooping seagulls.

Increasingly aggressive gulls plaguing Britain’s coastlines are no longer content to steal leftover chips, they say.

Pharmacists in Cornwall said they were now seeing at least one patient a week who had been left bloodied or cut as a result, with many more likely to treat their wounds at home.

In some cases, young children have been left with cuts to their faces after birds attempted to steal food right out of their mouths, they said.

NHS Kernow clinical commissioning group, in Cornwall, said most of those suffering such attacks could be treated at their local chemist.  But some cases have left children and pensioners in hospital.

Earlier this year, MPs warned that many coastal towns are being “terrorised” by the birds, who appear to have come increasingly aggressive, with some calling for a cull on the birds.

Gull experts said the birds have become more confident and changed their tactics, after working out they could get more food dive-bombing people than by scrabbling for scraps.

Legislation protecting seagulls derives from an EU directive on birds.

During the parliamentary debate on seagulls, MP John Woodcook said the potentially to introduce a cull post-Brexit could be “a real step forward for an independent UK.”

The MP said his own constituency of Barrow and Furness was “blighted and besieged” by the feathered menace.

The public is divided, supporting the idea of a gull cull by a small margin, with 44 per cent in favour, and 36 per cent opposed, a YouGov survey of 1,700 people found.

Claire Field, a community pharmacist at Carbis Bay, close to St Ives, said: “We have seen adults and young children with cuts around and inside their mouths as well as their hands where sneaky seagulls have swooped down to take their food.” As a minimum, any cuts should be cleaned with antiseptic, she said.