A man was bitten on the inside of his mouth by a seagull trying to get food at Weymouth Harbour.

Stuart Emanuel, 52, from Chickerell, was eating a sandwich on Weymouth harbourside when he had a very startling exchange with a seagull.

Stuart said: “I was just eating a sandwich and talking to my wife and the next minute I felt a pinching feeling as if a pair of pliers was pinching my lip. I didn’t see the seagull, it came at an angle out of nowhere.

“It drew blood on both sides of my lip, inside and outside. It was very painful and really shocked me. I am a bit worried it will get infected. I haven’t been to the doctors but I’ve put some antibacterial cream on and the swelling seems to have gone down a bit.

“It was only a cheese and onion sandwich, it wasn’t even that special!”

Despite Dorset Council putting up a number of signs around the harbour asking the public not to feed the seagulls, a lot of people still throw food for the birds. This behaviour has prompted the seagulls to become more aggressive towards anyone holding food.

Stuart said: “Last year I was down at the harbour and I saw a group of lads feeding the seagulls and I asked them not to. They got a bit stroppy and called me the seagull police. Maybe that’s why the seagull attacked me - it was getting it’s own back.

“It is so difficult to enforce the rules on not feeding the seagulls but I don’t know what we can do about them. It is inhumane to cull them, they only go for the food because they are hungry.”

The lockdown has meant that there have been fewer people spending time sat at harbourside. Stuart thinks that this may have led to the seagulls becoming more desperate as there have been less opportunities for them to scavenge for food.

He said: “To grab a sandwich out of my mouth the seagull must have been pretty desperate and they seem to have gotten cheekier. It didn’t even get the sandwich in the end because I ended up throwing it in the bin after it had tried to get it out of my mouth. What a lose-lose situation.”