It is known as the birthplace of Benjamin Britten, the late British composer and avid birdwatcher. But people in the Suffolk coastal town of Lowestoft are struggling to maintain their most famous resident’s enthusiasm for the local sea bird population in the face of an aerial onslaught from kittiwakes.

Growing numbers of the endangered species have sent locals scurrying for cover as their droppings descend from the sky with increasing frequency. 

With some people reluctant to leave their homes at all, one local business owner said staff were spending up to two hours daily cleaning the mess left on his shop’s windows and canopy.

‘It stinks and it’s making a big mess,’ said Mr Vino of V&A Stores. ‘A few customers came into the shop last week and complained about the smell’.

The birds have been resident in the resort town since the 1950s, when they began to colonise the entrance to the town’s port. 

Such is the ubiquity of the red-listed species that efforts to prevent them from nesting on local buildings have given way to initiatives designed to accommodate them.

Most notable among those has been the construction of kittiwake ‘hotels’, artificial nesting sites which have been in place for the past two years.

Another case in point is the local BT building, where netting intended to keep the gulls at bay was replaced with nesting shelves.  

A kittiwake nesting on a building in the east Suffolk coastal resort of Lowestoft, where the birds have increased in number from 650 to 2,000 over the past four years 

Bird mess covers the canopy of a shop in Lowestoft, where locals have been sent scurrying for cover as kittiwake droppings descend from the sky with increasing frequency

Kittiwakes are seen perching on purpose-built ledges on the side of a building in Lowestoft 

Such measures have helped Lowestoft to buck the trend that has caused a 40 per cent decline in the global kittiwake population since 1975 as fish stocks have been diminished by overfishing and climate change.

But not all residents are convinced that is a welcome development.  

Tony Shreeve, who has lived opposite the BT building for the past decade, points to the havoc the birds have wrought.

‘They are a bit hooligan-like – they tear the place apart and go through the bins,’ he said.

Even tourists such as Shirley and Christopher Wyartt, visiting Lowestoft from Ipswich, have noticed the mess made by the birds.

‘It is just left on the ground,’ said Mrs Wyartt. ‘It is an eyesore.’

Kittiwakes typically return to where they hatched, and the number of birds flocking to Lowestoft to settle during the spring and summer has risen more than threefold over the past four years.

Almost 2,000 kittiwakes have returned to their usual nests in the town, up from about 650 in 2021 – making Lowestoft home to one of the UK’s most successful urban colonies.

Lowestoft residents Shirley and Christopher Wyartt have noticed the mess made by the birds. ‘It is just left on the ground,’ said Mrs Wyartt. ‘It is an eyesore’

Kittiwakes are seen perching on an old building along the seafront in Lowestoft, East Suffolk

The nearshore kittiwake hotels installed in Lowestoft, where residents have branded the endangered birds ‘hooligans’

‘They’ve really come back in force now and it is more noticeable,’ said Dick Houghton of the Lowestoft Seagull Action Group.

‘If they were hatched in the town, they’d tend to return there. The more birds we have, the more mess.’

Houghton is not averse to the birds, but neither is he oblivious to the problems they cause.

‘They’ve increased in numbers by setting up on shop fronts and bedroom windows,’ he said. ‘They c*** over the side of the nest, which generally lands on the pavement.

‘They feed entirely on fish and small sea creatures – the stink is the smell of rotting fish. They’ve become more in your face and in your nose.’

Explaining that chicks usually return to where they were hatched after spending the winter months in the North Atlantic, Houghton said the first kittiwake returned to Lowestoft on February 1, with the rest following ‘en masse’.

‘The hotels were built to provide opportunities for the birds to nest, otherwise the wind turbines could kill them,’ said Houghton. 

‘People have assumed the hotels were there to take birds from the town – which is the ideal eventually.

William Irvine, who recently moved to nearby Carlton Colville, is seen in Lowestoft, where he welcomed the presence of kittiwakes: ‘It is a gorgeous sight to see – they are very pretty birds’

A since-removed mural by anonymous street artist Banksy on the side of a residential building depicted a spray-painted seagull tucking into a refuse skip full of polystyrene chips

‘It takes one or two brave ones to try it out before the rest follow.’

One seagull that has definitely gone, however, is a giant mural painted by the street artist Banksy as part of his Great British Spraycation series. 

The mural, part of a collection that appeared across Norfolk and Suffolk in 2021, showed a seagull tucking into a refuse skip full of polystyrene chips.

It was removed from the side of a local house in the small hours in 2023.

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For all the controversy surrounding the birds, there are tentative signs that the offshore ‘artificial nesting structures’ – or kittiwake hotels – are starting to bear fruit. 

Following efforts by ornithologists to use life-like decoy kittiwakes and recordings of their distinctive calls to coax the birds to the hotels, a kittiwake chick hatched at one of them last year for the first time. 

It is hoped that more birds will nest and lay eggs in the hotels over time, prompting the birds to return there rather than populating the town.

‘Businesses, and people living in Lowestoft, who are host to kittiwakes are playing a vital role in protecting vulnerable seabirds,’ a spokesman for East Suffolk Council said.

‘However, we do appreciate that there are challenges associated with housing kittiwakes, including mess.

‘East Suffolk Council continues to coordinate regular pressure washing of public areas during the nesting season, to support local people by managing the mess from kittiwakes and other birds.

‘The Lowestoft Kittiwake Partnership has also been supporting businesses with advice on managing the impact of urban gulls.’