But Tele readers have vented their anger after yesterday’s story in which a man told of seeing council workers shoot adult gulls and beat a chick to death.

Words such as “barbaric”, “cruel” and “horrible” feature in the flood of letters — although one reader does say “hats off to the council”.

The witness, who did not wish to be named, said he saw two council pest control workers shoot at seagulls in Gellatly Street. He then watched in horror as took a gull chick and battered it to death.

The man was so sickened he called the police — but officers said there was nothing they could do because it was in the council’s remit to destroy gulls in any way it saw fit.

According to the RSPB, all gull species are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981.

In Scotland, it is illegal to recklessly injure or kill any gull or damage or destroy an active nest or its contents. It is also illegal to prevent birds from accessing their nests.

The law does recognise that in certain circumstances control measures may be necessary. Licences can be issued allowing nests to be destroyed or birds to be killed if there is no non-lethal solution.

A spokesman for the city council said today there would be no investigation into the incident reported in yesterday’s Tele.

“Animal control officers deal with the nuisance of gulls in the most appropriate, humane manner,” he said.

An RSPB Scotland spokeswoman said, “The RSPB acknowledges that some town dwellers find urban roof-nesting gulls a problem and we accept that measures can be taken by councils to prevent then nesting and control numbers.

“However, the herring gull is a species of conservation concern, due to a significant long-term decline in breeding numbers in Britain.

“As such, RSPB Scotland favours non-lethal solutions such as denying gulls access to nest sites in the first place, not supplying them with large amounts of food waste to scavenge from and — in the long term — not designing buildings that lend themselves to becoming gull colonies.

“As a last resort, the Scottish Government publishes a number of open general licences that permit an authorised person to undertake culls of gulls or destruction of nests for specific reasons, e.g. for the protection of public health.”