Angry Birds balloon seagull deterrents are working but keep being stolen

Angry Birds have been recruited to frighten seagulls in Rhyl, north Wales, but people keep stealing them. Scare balloons featuring characters from the popular video game franchise have been attached to traffic cones and dotted around the high street in a bid to stop the pests stealing food from shoppers. The idea was thought up by Denbighshire Council who say it works well until people take them.

A council spokeswoman said anyone who knows Rhyl knows there are problems with seagulls causing a nuisance in the warmer months and making an "incredible mess" of the streets. She said: “We continue to try everything we can to tackle the problem, including cleaning down the streets every morning but obviously, they are back to the same condition by the evening and so the process goes on and is quite costly.
“Yes, we know these weird Angry Bird type scare balloons look a bit daft but they do seem to work and we have had good feedback from businesses on the high street since we started using them. The only problem is that, while they may scare the seagulls away, not so for people who take a fancy to them and take them home with them.” The spokeswoman added: “Gulls don’t like bright, scary owl faces on masks or balloons.
“They have excellent eyesight and are spooked by unexpected visual signals or predators but any deterrents need to contain some element of change and movement within them but also be able to be moved at regular intervals - birds quickly acclimatise to a static deterrent. The feedback we’ve had is that, the birds were still around on the roofs but were not coming down to ground level. We’ve been back to the premises helping us out with the trials and they have said they will bring them in each night so we will continue with it.”