Dartmouth-based doctor, Brian Boughton, 62, shot dead a seagull with an air rifle after it dive-bombed his wife’s lunch and left it covered in droppings.

He was prosecuted by the RSPCA and given a conditional discharge and ordered to pay £400 costs at Totnes magistrates court.

Boughton described life in Dartmouth, a premier West Country yachting port, as being like ‘living in medieval squalor…. my property is sometimes inches thick with seagull droppings.’

See the June issue of Yachting Monthly on contributor Carol O’Shea’s idea for dealing with rogue gulls.