'Raucous' Seagulls: Parisians' New Noisy Neighbours

Paris, Aug 8 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 8th Aug, 2019 ) :Parisians need no longer go to the beach, in the time-honoured August tradition, to hear the plaintive cries of seagulls, but the birds' growing cacophony is ruffling many feathers in the French capital.

Despite being a two-hour drive from the sea, Paris has attracted a growing number of gulls jostling with pigeons for a perch on the city's rooftops.

"In the spring we used to hear sparrows, it was the sound of dawn and was very pleasant. But now it's the raucous cries of these bothersome gulls!" said Anne Castro, a psychiatrist in the hilly Belleville district in the city's northeast, one of the birds' favourite nesting places.

Rodolphe Ghelfi, a security guard in his fifties who also lives in the neighbourhood, also feels tormented by the cawing.

"When I moved to Paris 20 years ago I had the pleasure of listening to pigeons cooing and sparrows singing. But in recent years these huge gulls have landed on the roofs of Paris and begin bawling early in the morning," he said.

"I no longer have to set the alarm," he told AFP, clearly riled by what he called the "hellish" sound.

Gilles Teillac took a more benign view of his feathered neighbours, whose presence has lent a maritime air to the French capital.

"You can be two blocks from your home and make your wife believe you're calling from a telephone booth in Le Havre," on the Normandy coast, the affable pensioner joked.

Among the spots where the gulls tend to congregate are the environs of the fire-damaged Notre-Dame Cathedral, on an island in the middle of the Seine, as well as the old Jewish quarter of Le Marais.

Jean-Philippe Siblet, an ornithologist at the Natural History Museum in Paris, linked the gulls' move to the city to their growing difficulty in finding food along the coasts, where ecosystems are increasingly upset by tourism and construction.

In the open-air dumps on the outskirts of Paris, the omnivores have found rich pickings.

"In winter they think nothing of flying dozens of kilometres to an open-air dump... they eat plenty and are therefore more likely to survive, which means each year they are more numerous to return (to Paris)," Siblet said.

The roofs of Parisian buildings, most of which have seven or more storeys, also offer the gulls a haven from predators.