How Gulls Stole Our Lunch — and Raised Money Doing So

We pay a high price to live in St Andrews. Not solely due to ludicrous property prices but because menacing are creatures looming round every corner. I, for one, live in perpetual fear and constant wariness, awaiting a claw, nip, slap or squawk.  

This is not about parking wardens, but rather the St Andrew’s seagull population. Or, more accurately, the variety of gulls that fall under the misleading umbrella term ‘seagull’ - most commonly the Herring Gull, the Lesser Black-backed Gull, and the Great Black-backed Gull. 

Regardless of the classification, it is like daylight robbery for a gull to swoop in, snatch the lifeblood of your day from your hands and soar away laughing, food mockingly clutched in beak. Then it swoops back down to leather you across the jaw with its wing.

Credit: The Scotsman

The East Sands Cheesy Toast Shack knows this ordeal all too well. Here, gulls are not just an inconvenience but a genuine threat to business, snatching around 30 toasties a day from unassuming customers. Kate Carter-Larg, who owns the shack with her husband, Sam Larg, says that attacks can be ‘really scary’ and are particularly bad during summer months which is when they tend to hear ‘lots of screaming from groups […] who have been swooped on’. It’s not just the toasties they’re after; Kate also recounts instances of gulls robbing entire bars of surf wax and even barbies.  

This bombardment of such a small, family-run business led Kate and Sam to try birds-of-prey noises and kites to deter the gulls; measures that ultimately didn’t work — preventatively or aesthetically. Their next move was to introduce a seagull insurance — an optional £1 donation which enables customers to cover their toasties in the likely event that it is immediately stolen by a greedy beak.

Rather than using the insurance profits in further anti-gull defence measures, however, Kate and Sam donate all proceeds to charity, helping local organisations such as the food bank Storehouse, MS Therapy Tayside and Cash for Kids. 

It’s an unexpected silver lining — proof that sometimes, out of chaos comes community spirit. In their unwavering persistence, the gulls have inadvertently helped raise money for good causes. 

Credit: Instagram @TheCheesyToastShack

While students and business owners bemoan their existence, not everyone shares this perspective. The St Andrews Birding Society, established in 2019, makes a case for the gulls that goes beyond their unintentional philanthropy.  

Despite how well-fed they appear, most gull species are struggling, experiencing rapid population decline. Through his involvement in a survey with The British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), BirdSoc president, Tom Beckett, says that most common British species fall on the Birds of Conservation Concern amber list while Herring Gulls — ‘the most common species in St Andrews and the ones that steal your chips, [are] on the red list.’ Tom outlines how, in response to harmful anthropogenic practices, increasing pressure in their natural breeding habitats and (remarkably) lack of food availability, gulls have adapted to a world that is no longer designed for them, ‘learning to exploit novel ecosystems and food sources’ as a means of survival.

Credit: Bird Club, St Andrews Bird Soc

As far as treasurer James Weeks is concerned, ‘They are only animals following their instincts to get food.’ James highlights that beyond the Herring Gull, St Andrews is home to some rarer species. The red listed Kittiwakes are occasionally seen offshore, surface-feeding for fish as well as vagrant gulls like the Sabine’s Gull and the Iceland Gull. These birds, alongside the more common Black Headed Gull are ‘vastly innocent’, says James, and tend to steal food from each other rather than from civilians — a form of feeding known as kleptoparasitism. 

Credit: Scottish Wildlife Trust — Black Headed Gull

Like everyone else, both Tom and James have had their personal run ins with the gulls. Tom has had Herring Gulls both steal his food and fly into his head. Nonetheless, he believes that ‘we should cut gulls some slack’ and must ‘give them credit for the way in which they've adapted to urban life’. James, meanwhile, encourages people to simply ‘get over it’, and asserts that the occasional stealing of food is ‘a small win for animals in the great ecological battle.’  

So, where does that leave us? On one hand, we have an aggressive airborne menace. On the other, a misunderstood, endangered species. In the middle of it all, a local business that turned avian adversity into an opportunity for good. Perhaps the answer is not in fighting the seagulls but in making peace with them — because if the Toasty Shack can turn seagull-induced despair into charity, maybe there's hope for the rest of us.