Chimney sweep captures moment ‘rambunctious’ seagull falls from an old flue

A chimney sweep was met with surprise when he “battled” a “rambunctious” seagull after it became stuck in a disused chimney flue.

Neil Jarrett, 48, Gosport in Hampshire, filmed the moment a sizeable seagull dropped from a chimney flue before flapping its wings in a panic when it was discovered.

Mr Jarrett, ex-Royal Navy, received a phone call from a concerned resident after she noticed feathers falling from her unused chimney flue, which he initially suspected might have been a dead animal.

“I said the chances are, because we had a deluge of rain the night before, it’s probably weather affects on an old chimney,” the chimney sweep told the PA news agency.

“I asked if there was any movement, but she didn’t hear anything, so it could be old feathers from way back when or it could be a dead bird that’s been dislodged because of the weather.”

He rescued the trapped bird on Wednesday afternoon and posted a video of the moment on Instagram in which he exclaims expletives after noticing the bird’s webbed feet and large wingspan.

“He was a little bit more rambunctious than the others, purely because of the size of him,” Mr Jarrett said.

“He had quite a bit of mass to him and he started flapping his wings. He’s got a sizable wingspan in comparison to a starling.

“He had far more bite power than any of the other birds I’ve rescued, as I’ve discovered.”

He said he has rescued an array of birds, including lots of pigeons, magpies, jackdaws and sparrows, but never a seagull.

“There is no way I was expecting it to be a seagull, to be honest. I thought it might be any young pigeon. This was a first for me,” he explained.

“I tentatively pulled down the board. I expected to see clawed feet of a pigeon, but instead I saw the webbed feet of a seagull and its white bottom and under belly, which is why I colourfully exclaimed.

“I had to battle with that to get it out. The ungrateful little monkey didn’t like what was happening. It tried to bite me a few times.”

The seagull stood on his hand for around three seconds before flying out of the window in search for food and water, Mr Jarrett suggested.

“He had probably been in there a couple of days and he was probably quite dehydrated by that stage. He started to panic as I was trying to get him, so that created a lot of masonry dust within the flue, which he would have ingested,” he said.

Mr Jarrett believes the seagull may have landed in the flue as birds are likely to start nesting during this time of year.

“We’re in that nesting season where birds are fledgling youngsters, juvenile are scrabbling around for food off parents, so they do tend to knock each other down and then they’re stretching their wings and figuring out how to do this whole flying thing,” he said.

He added that he rescued the bird in the Alverstoke area of Gosport, which he says contains many houses with tall chimney stacks.

“In the Alverstoke village, there’s a lot of tall chimneys around there and the chimney stacks have got quite a big surface area and there are normally multiples of six or eight pots that emanate out the top of those stacks,” he explained.

Mr Jarrett, who has worked as a chimney sweep for more than two years said “no two days are the same” at his job.

“That’s the nice thing about the job that we do. Any chimney sweep will say the same, and there’s no cliche involved, every day is totally different. No two days are the same,” he said.