ITHIN seconds of my American grandson Tom buying an ice cream on Lyme Regis seafront in Dorset, he was buffeted around the head by wings and his vanilla scoop vanished from its cone. We all laughed and told him it had been a ‘great British seaside experience’. Tom laughed, too—but, in truth, he had become another victim of the sort of opportunist theft that afflicts many a beach and promenade, for gulls are notoriously bold exponents of the natural practice known as kleptoparasitism. In layman’s terms, this means hanging around with the certainty of stealing a meal and it sustains a broad spectrum
