Found a gull

Last reviewed 25 August 2026. General guidance, not a substitute for a vet or the RSPCA. If a bird is badly injured, phone rather than read.

A grounded chick in summer is usually not an orphan

This is the single most common gull call of the year, and the usual answer is to leave it alone. A fledgling is fully feathered and has left the nest deliberately before it can fly properly; its parents are almost always nearby and still feeding it. The RSPB's guidance on young birds is that a healthy fledgling is best left where it is, and that people and pets should be kept away rather than the bird moved.

A nestling — bare, downy, obviously too young to be out — is a different case and does need help.

The RSPB directs readers to the RSPCA for gull-specific advice, noting that gulls are an exception to the general garden-bird guidance. Roof-nesting complicates it: a chick that has come off a roof cannot be put back, and the parents may continue to feed it on the ground.

When it does need help

• Visibly injured — a hanging wing, a wound, blood, or an inability to stand.
• Caught in netting or line. Anti-gull netting on roofs traps birds, and monofilament fishing line causes the constriction injuries a rescue will recognise. Do not cut a bird free of netting at height.
• In a road, or somewhere it will be run over or attacked. Moving it a short distance to safety, within sight and earshot of its parents, is different from taking it away.
• Oiled, or contaminated with anything. This needs a rescue with washing facilities, not a bath at home.
• A nestling out of a nest, as above.

What the law permits

Taking a disabled wild bird in order to tend it and release it when it recovers is provided for by the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 itself, so picking up a genuinely injured gull is lawful. It is the same provision that makes it lawful to pick up an injured pigeon, and it is worth knowing precisely because gulls are so often assumed to be outside the law's protection. They are not: they are inside it, and the protection runs both ways.

A bird taken in must be released once it can fend for itself. Keeping a recovered wild bird is not what the provision permits.

Who to contact

No organisation in this directory is recorded as naming gulls specifically, so the listing below is of organisations recorded as taking wild birds or wildlife generally. Ring before travelling: capacity changes daily and coastal rescues fill in the summer.