All-Ireland: Croke Park seagull recuperating after pitch invasion

A seagull that staged its own pitch invasion during Sunday’s All Ireland Gaelic Football final will hopefully be released back into the wild in the next few days, a wildlife charity has said.

The bird landed on the Croke Park pitch during Armagh’s victory over Galway and stayed there for about 25 minutes, while an epic game took place around it.

It was eventually removed from the pitch in Dublin by a match official and taken to Kildare Wildlife Rescue centre.

The centre’s manager Dan Donoher said people started contacting them during the game.

“We started getting tagged through social media and emails started coming through about the seagull on the pitch – a lot of worried people,” he said.

“So one of the officials was able to remove the gull – I think it was on the pitch for 24 minutes before it was safely removed – and then he was brought down to us in Kildare town.”

He said the seagull had a slight injury to its right wing.

“It’s not a broken wing, so it hadn’t sort of fallen from the sky,” he said.

“So maybe he was trying to come down and got hit by something, but I don’t think anybody had seen that.

“At the time I was worried it was going to be a badly broken wing if he did get a kick or hit by the ball, but thankfully nothing major.

“We’re treating him just with pain relief and he got some fluids when he arrived.

“So he’s just resting and we’re feeding him up for a few days.”

More than 80,000 people watched the final at the the Dublin venue, while more than a million viewed it on TV.

Mr Donoher joked that it was their first celebrity seagull.

“It’s a first from a live match on the telly any way,” he said.

“We do get animals sometimes that are caught in football nets or maybe found on the pitch, but this would be the very first of a bird just dropping on the pitch during a live game.”

The centre currently has about 400 animals, 100 of them seagulls.

“We do get a lot of gulls at this time of year – it’s orphan season so this is our busiest time of the year,” Mr Donoher said.

“They do come into conflict with humans a lot.”

He said there had been a 70% increase in people contacting the group in the last year alone.

“At the moment we have swans, hedgehogs, we have a lot of barn owls, long-eared owls, we have garden birds, pigeons – that’s another common one we see – otters, pine martens, all different types of Irish wildlife,” he said.

“Over the next couple of months all the young animals will be released back into the wild.”

He said the Croke Park seagull will be released back into the area it came from “because most likely he would have young at this time of year”.

Despite his celebrity status, the centre has so far resisted the temptation to name the seagull (Sam would have been obvious choice).

“It’s something we don’t normally do, but a lot of people are asking, so we’re open to suggestions,” Mr Donoher said.