I am bewildered. Why do the likes of the people in Fore Street come to live in a beautiful place like Budleigh Salterton if they do not like seagulls that are an integral part of the seascape?

I am bewildered. Why do the likes of the people in Fore Street come to live in a beautiful place like Budleigh Salterton if they do not like seagulls that are an integral part of the seascape? To see them follow the fishermen's boats in is a wonderful sight and they feed them the left over bits of fish regularly on the beach.

Those of us who appreciate these beautiful birds believe that we should stand in harmony with nature and not against it. Some people who live here are just too house proud and get rid of them on the slightest excuse.

I have also witnessed, just recently, the chopping down of a tree and hedge at the Mason's Hall while birds where still nesting. People seem to have no idea about the appropriate time to do these things and it might help if the Journal was to publicise this information.

It is all very well to say apply for a licence to make it legal, but it seems to me these licences are given all to readily and do not seem to take the welfare of the birds into account.

Are you really saying that all four of these residents had really water-tight reasons for killing these poor animals? I, for one, would love to know on what basis these licences were granted and who polices the system? I would beg the residents to show a bit of compassion and put up with the slight inconvenience for what is only the breeding season, not forever!

We rarely have seagull attacks here, as most are well behaved... if they start, it will be because we have taken their babies away and made them feel threatened. How would these residents of Fore Street and others feel if we did the same to them!

Anya-Nicola Darr,

(address withheld).

*****

With reference to seagulls, I find them a danger to the public. They are full of disease, as experts have reported, in their droppings.

They are raucous in noise, day and night, and attack the public when they have young. If, as a human, I did the same I would be put away.

The police say removing seagulls breaks the law. Yet there are 1/4 million abortions reported every year. So, we can throw into a bucket a human baby and the cost to the NHS is hundreds of millions of pounds, but not an egg of a seagull. Ladies, who support seagulls, hold your heads in shame.

East Devon District Council - reduce the numbers of seagulls on health grounds.

Charles Holmes,

(who suffers from seagulls),

13 Chapel Street,

Budleigh Salterton.