SHOCKED residents claim a “baby pigeon” died after becoming trapped in wire netting above WHSmith in Basildon town centre.

The pigeon, which was trapped for more than a day according to residents, was freed by firefighters on Tuesday afternoon.

However, it passed away after receiving treatment at a vets, according to residents.

Claire Burroughs, who campaigns to protect pigeons and often goes out to help those trapped in wire netting, has called for a ban of the “evil” material to prevent “sad and preventable” deaths.

WHSmith has confirmed the netting was removed as soon as it became aware of a fault.

Claire, 40, said: “I got a informed by someone in an adjacent office that the baby pigeon was trapped in netting, I called the fire brigade and they got it down but it did sadly die.

“It is total suffering and pain for the bird. No one would want to die like this, and it is incredibly distressing to see for people who are in surrounding offices. It seems that quite a few pigeons have died there.

“We have no idea how long the bird was up there, a day or more at least, and WHSmith’s got funny at us for calling the fire brigade. However, if the netting was maintained, we wouldn’t have had to call them.”

She added that upsetting incidents like this with birds happen every couple of months and referenced an incident at Southend East c2c station in January that saw the station branded a “pigeon death trap”.

c2c removed the netting following the complaints.

“This netting is pure evil. I do want to see it removed and banned and for people to move over to grid netting, which is stronger and meshed, so birds can’t get trapped as easily,” she added.

“Pigeons are not popular with everyone, but they do deserve to live and they don’t deserve to suffer.

“From the pictures, you can see some others have already died up there. They have probably been missed where it is around the back of the building. It is really not an easy space to spot.

“This does sadly happen quite frequently.”

A WHSmith spokesperson: “As soon as we became aware that the protective netting had developed a fault we removed it. We are committed to protecting animal welfare across our operations and we apologise for the distress the incident has caused local residents.”