Here, here to George Marshall's letter. The gulls in my road have made life even more of a nightmare during the recent hot spell.

With our windows open to catch any breath of air, the gulls' constant territorial screaming and squawking and their hatchlings' incessant whimpering have disturbed what little sleep I could get.

The gulls also raid our rubbish bags every week, punching holes in them to look for food.

We recycle all our surplus foodstuffs so there is never anything there to tempt them but they have learned that there might be so every week when the dustmen come the street is littered from end to end with ripped bags and their often unsavoury contents.

This is an insane situation. Gulls are protected but we are not. Both the nesting on the roofs and the raiding of the bin bags is learned behaviour.

If it were rats, we would call in the exterminators. If we culled the gulls which have learned to make our lives a misery in this way, the population would quickly return to normal and we could perhaps go back to enjoying the gulls where they belong - not on our roofs but on the cliffs along our seashore.

-Paul Brazier, Brighton