A MAN from Mossblown is encouraging people to litter pick on at least one of their walks during the month of May after coming across a dead seagull on a beach which he fears may have perished due to the surrounding rubbish.

William McMahon was walking on Croy beach when he came across the seagull’s carcass which was lying close to pieces of litter strewn across the sand.

Moved to action, William took to Facebook group ‘Ayrshire Walks’ where he proposed that each member fill a bag with rubbish and take it home to ensure that the sad scene he came across is not repeated.

William told the Advertiser: “It looked as if the bird hadn’t long died. I didn’t examine it to see if it had any other injuries but I thought the whole scene looked quite sad. I don’t normally take pictures of dead things but with the amount of publicity about plastics in the ocean, I wondered if there was anything we could do about it.

“The creator of the Ayrshire Walks page, Marla Baird, runs a ‘keep Ayrshire braw’ theme so I thought we could make folk aware and get them to lift at least one bag of rubbish wherever they go. It’s not uniting people against the common enemy of litterers but we’ve all seen posts of the mess at beauty spots and we say it’s terrible but sometimes we don’t do anything about it.”

Although William noted that bins nearby were overflowing, he said protecting the environment comes down to individual responsibility and isn’t always about passing the blame.

He continued: “It’s easy to blame the local authority but if you’re taking a picnic to the beach and you went to the trouble of packing the car, you can take it all home. Blaming someone will not solve the problem so it’s time to take a bit of action.

“I’m not criticising that stretch of beach from Croy to Culzean for being messy, either, it’s a general litter problem.”