Like many others interested in the countryside, I never miss Springwatch, particularly the one featuring Pitsea tip.

One item suggested gulls and other birds had developed an immunity to some of the unpleasant foods they find on tips.

This has not always been the case, since in the Sixties and Eighties, when digging for fishing bait along the foreshore between Shoebury and Canvey, we would find gulls flapping about on the mud, unable to fly, emaciated and suffering.

Analysis revealed they had eaten poisons from the then-active Leigh tip.

These poisons are still being dumped in landfills.

Thousands of empty snail shells can be found on farmland adjacent to Colchester tip, and the year before, hundreds of dead and dying starlings were found.

T E Langley
Cumberland Avenue
Southend