Woman tells how seagull dropped live budgie on her head as she was eating bag of chips

One minute you’re strolling along enjoying a bag of chips and the bracing sea air. The next, you’ve been mobbed by seagulls and bombed with a budgie. Jill Newman and her mother Betty Keegan were walking along in Lerwick, Shetland, when an extremely odd natural event occurred.



A hungry seagull had caught a budgie, then dropped it on Mrs Newman’s head after spying her far more tempting chips. She takes up the story: ‘It was just the last thing you’d expect when you’re walking along eating a pack of chips. I felt something scrape my head then saw it bounce off and hit a shop window. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it was a budgie.

‘It was scared – and no doubt relieved not to be seagull food – and flew on to the castle walls of Fort Charlotte. The whole situation must have looked a laugh. A crowd gathered in the high street and eventually we managed to coax it down from the walls. When we got it down we were relieved but I got a few good nips on my fingers for my trouble.’



Mrs Newman, 38, said the tagged domesticated bird, which is thought to be female, was ‘very traumatised and shaking’. After taking her to the vets and giving her some seed and water, Mrs Keegan decided to call the new arrival Angel – because she fell from the heavens. The budgie is now living in Aberdeen with a friend of Mrs Keegan whose own budgie recently died.