My "neighbours from hell" have recently moved away leaving me to once again enjoy my bungalow in peace. I have a duck pond at the bottom of my property that in recent years has been attracting increasing numbers of seagulls between March and August to nest and generally make a nuisance of themselves.

They feed on the large resident frog and toad population as well as ducklings - but above all else, they squawk day and night and "bomb" cars and windows with their foul excrement.

The gulls used to nest on a loch about a couple of miles north of the town, but moved into the town a few years ago.

Seagulls don't confine themselves to the seaside and mysteriously appear out of nowhere when you start to plough, to feed on the worms and grubs exposed by the upturned furrows. While they do no harm to farmers, I believe that the bigger, Black Back gulls kill lambs in northern and western areas in much the same way as carrion crows, or corbies do.

Seagulls have become an increasing problem in some of our Scottish towns and cities. Their early morning squawking wakes up residents and holidaymakers, They nest on rooftops and swoop, alarmingly low over those who get close to their chicks, while others literally steal takeaway food, like chips, out of the hands of the unwary - but it's the filth they leave on rooftops and vehicles that is one of their biggest sins.

They have become such a problem in nearby Dumfries that the council has spent many years debating possible solutions.

Hawks have been used with limited success to scare them away, but sadly the best solution is to cull them by deploying marksmen to shoot them at rubbish dumps - one of their main sources of food.

In addition, their eggs should be pricked to prevent them developing into chicks, but at the same time encouraging the female to continue to brood rather than lay another clutch.

Sadly, just mentioning the possibility of a cull starts a vociferous backlash of opposition.

Rats and mice don't attract favourable press and are trapped and poisoned in their millions for obvious reasons. Rabbits, moles, grey squirrels, pigeons and crows are all trapped and shot with hardly anyone batting an eyelid.

Snaring and shooting is essential for controlling rural foxes that are responsible for significant losses of ground-nesting birds as well as lambs.

To many, the practice of shooting, trapping and snaring wild animals as part of good environment and land management practice is seen as cruel and unnecessary. Sadly in all too many cases there are few alternatives.

Even Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) and other leading conservation bodies reluctantly accept the need to control certain predators to allow other species to flourish. For instance, SNH insist on a plan to manage corvids (magpies and carrion crows) when considering a capercaillie regeneration programme, as those pests will devour the eggs of nesting birds.

SNH have been operating a number of targeted goose management schemes in Scotland since 2000 to provide financial support to farmers for the extra costs incurred by grazing geese and to compensate them for their loss in productivity.

In addition to protecting endangered species, the schemes controversially permit culling of those species, like Greenland Barnacle geese and Greylag geese, where numbers have increased dramatically.

Few would argue against the need to trap predators of ground-nesting birds like weasels, stoats and mink. That is often done by laying a log over streams to form a bridge that encourages those predators to use it to keep their feet dry and get caught in a trap laid in the middle. Too often those highly visible traps are damaged by so-called animal lovers.

It's the same with Larsen traps, those cages used to catch corvids. The same misguided sector of society regularly release decoy birds and any other corvids that have become trapped.

Then of course there is the annual requirement to cull red deer, not only to protect forests, but also themselves as too many would lead to unacceptable losses from malnutrition in a harsh winter.

More controversial has been the recent culling of badgers in selected areas of England in a bid to control the incidence of TB in cattle.

Whatever the reasons, many species of wild animals and birds are culled for a variety of good reasons - and I would like to see seagulls included in that list.