Some 35 species of seabirds are now on the UK official Amber list warning that the decline in their numbers is great enough to cause concern. Amoung them are herring, black-headed, lesser black-backed and common gulls (now rather uncommon).
In the last three years the number of birds brought live into care has averaged around 1000 annually. Over 500 come into care centres because of shortage of their natural
food, fish.
- they are brought in weak and exhausted, in bad conditions;
- they are poisoned in towns by scavenging food local people have thrown away or
- suffer traffic accidents.
- Of the totals injured some 300 were caught in oil.
According to the County Ecologists in West and East Sussex and Kent, only one tenth
of oiled birds make it to the shore where they can be rescued.
