The haunting cry of the herring gull reminds us of childhood beach holidays or the theme song of the long-running BBC radio series “Deser Island Discs”.

But today, this distinctive sound is more likely to be heard in our inner cities than at the seaside. Herring gulls have moved into the urban jungle, nesting on the roofs of tall buildings where they are safe from predators such as foxes or their marine cousin, the black-backed gull. There is also more food here than on the coast, where the decline of the fishing industry has made life more difficult for the gulls.

As is often the case when birds invade our perceived habitat, urban gulls elicit reactions ranging from cautious tolerance to outright hostility. But observe them a little more closely and you’ll see the kind of intimate behavior that inspired Dutch ornithologist Niko Tinbergen’s groundbreaking study, The World of the Herring Gull – for which he won the Nobel Prize in 1973.

It’s perhaps surprising that this well-known species is on the UK Red List of Threatened Birds, as its numbers have declined rapidly over the past few decades. Yet along my part of the coast in Somerset, there are still plenty of Herring Gulls hanging around on the sandbanks, patiently waiting for the tide to go out.