DURING a seaside break in Woolacombe I was mighty impressed by the local seagulls.

Unlike their urban invading cousins in Taunton, they behaved impeccably.

I wished I could have brought the Devon birds back to Somerset and packed ours off to Woolacombe.

It was surprising how the Devonshire flyers kept their distance from humans.

No filching of ice creams or chips from unsuspecting tourists. They happily fished for their own grub.

And there was only a modicum of that incessant squawking that plagues Somerset’s county town.

If only Taunton’s gulls would take a leaf out of their cross-border relatives’ book.

Over decades, our town has suffered an influx of migrant gulls exchanging life beside the seaside to become townies.

At the height of summer, it starts at 5am with the gang striking up the Cacophony in B Flat Minor as they screech into town. The end only comes at 9pm with the Last Flight of the (White) Bombs (know what I mean?) as they head home to sleep.

Over those intervening 16 hours, they plunder easy pickings, with food waste for the taking, often scavenged from rubbish bags ripped open by those mean-looking beaks.

And the protective adult gulls dive-bomb anyone who dares approach their young.

The RSPCA’s West Hatch wildlife centre once took in several gulls that were vomiting and appeared to be suffering from botulism.

In fact they were sozzled from bolting down waste from a brewery.

Once the boozy birds shook off their hangovers, they flew on their way.

The council has tried reducing gull numbers by replacing the eggs in their nests with dummy ones.

There have been appeals to people not to feed them, while food outlets are advised to use gull-proof waste bags.

But still the blighters come. They refuse to take flight.

A cull is off the cards as they are protected by law.

Despite that, there have been instances of people taking matters into their own hands.

Several dead seagulls were once strewn across a Minehead street, while a motorist flattened a number of the birds on a road in Taunton.

There is a possible solution that’s more humane than a gull cull. Could we perhaps put the birds on a plane to Rwanda now the deal to send asylum seekers there has collapsed?