An animal-loving car mechanic has become best pals with a pet seagull after nursing the injured fowl back to health.
Bruce Garden, 54, saved the seabird when he found her with a badly damaged wing on the industrial estate where he mends vehicles.
The feathered friend, who he named ‘Hopeful’, has since taken up residence in his garage - and now has a varied diet of muscles, baby bells cheese and mints.
And she has even become a hit with customers, who love seeing her strutting around the workshop while they get their cars fixed.
Bruce said: “She came in and has been part of the furniture ever since.
“She definitely has a personality. When I’m sitting in the chair in the workshop area of the garage, she will come over and sit on the jack close to me or peck my feet.
"The customers that come in are usually quite interested in it as it is not often you get to see a seagull in close quarters.
"I have not received any negative feedback about Hopeful, most people seem quite positive about it."
Bruce said he came across Hopeful roughly 18 months ago in the car park next to his business, Tyresavers, in Dumbarton, Scotland.
He had phoned a national animal charity after finding that she had a damaged wing, but they had told him to "let nature take its course".
However, when a passerby brought the forlorn bird to his garage a short time later, Bruce decided to take pity on her.
He said: “There was blood coming out of the injured wing and I just sort of helped her up and it walked away quite the thing.
“Someone else then brought it back into the garage as they know I am a soft touch when it comes to wildlife or anything else that is less fortunate.
"I helped nurse it back to health and named it 'Hopeful' in the hope it will fly again."
Bruce said it was trial and error working out how he could save the injured bird and what she might like to eat.
He first gave her a liquid supplement, rich in vitamin D and calcium, for her weakened bones, but later learned she enjoyed a raft of other types of food.
Bruce said: "I bought a liquid that you put into water which is meant to aid bone growth and it did from the point of view of allowing its wing to become strong enough as it continues to develop.
"Everyone has an impression that a seagull will eat anything. But I can tell you, this one doesn’t.
"I feed it mussels, mints and Babybel cheese, which it likes on occasion, and I go through the process of seeing what she likes."
Bruce said Hopeful now lives in a nest on his premises made from branches and old tyres.
And while she is still unable to fly due to her injured wing, she seems to enjoy being involved with the work in his garage.
He joked: "Anything that’s on the floor that she decides should not be there gets picked up and thrown.”
Bruce Garden, 54, saved the seabird when he found her with a badly damaged wing on the industrial estate where he mends vehicles.
The feathered friend, who he named ‘Hopeful’, has since taken up residence in his garage - and now has a varied diet of muscles, baby bells cheese and mints.
And she has even become a hit with customers, who love seeing her strutting around the workshop while they get their cars fixed.
Bruce said: “She came in and has been part of the furniture ever since.
“She definitely has a personality. When I’m sitting in the chair in the workshop area of the garage, she will come over and sit on the jack close to me or peck my feet.
"The customers that come in are usually quite interested in it as it is not often you get to see a seagull in close quarters.
"I have not received any negative feedback about Hopeful, most people seem quite positive about it."
Bruce said he came across Hopeful roughly 18 months ago in the car park next to his business, Tyresavers, in Dumbarton, Scotland.
He had phoned a national animal charity after finding that she had a damaged wing, but they had told him to "let nature take its course".
However, when a passerby brought the forlorn bird to his garage a short time later, Bruce decided to take pity on her.
He said: “There was blood coming out of the injured wing and I just sort of helped her up and it walked away quite the thing.
“Someone else then brought it back into the garage as they know I am a soft touch when it comes to wildlife or anything else that is less fortunate.
"I helped nurse it back to health and named it 'Hopeful' in the hope it will fly again."
Bruce said it was trial and error working out how he could save the injured bird and what she might like to eat.
He first gave her a liquid supplement, rich in vitamin D and calcium, for her weakened bones, but later learned she enjoyed a raft of other types of food.
Bruce said: "I bought a liquid that you put into water which is meant to aid bone growth and it did from the point of view of allowing its wing to become strong enough as it continues to develop.
"Everyone has an impression that a seagull will eat anything. But I can tell you, this one doesn’t.
"I feed it mussels, mints and Babybel cheese, which it likes on occasion, and I go through the process of seeing what she likes."
Bruce said Hopeful now lives in a nest on his premises made from branches and old tyres.
And while she is still unable to fly due to her injured wing, she seems to enjoy being involved with the work in his garage.
He joked: "Anything that’s on the floor that she decides should not be there gets picked up and thrown.”
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FunTranscript
00:00 This is the active side of the wing.
00:04 It's probably going to be taken out.
00:10 I am Bruce Garden and I'm the owner of this business here which is called Tire Savers.
00:25 We're in the middle of leaving the adjusted state.
00:28 [Sounds of the wind]
00:46 The bird is called Hopeful which was an Indian bird that I found down the Big Main car park in 2022.
00:54 It was on its back and quite clearly it was injured.
00:59 It had a broken wing and you could see blood coming out of the top and underneath.
01:05 And also it had a sore leg.
01:08 I kind of left it to nature's course.
01:13 Somebody else brought it to me because they know fine well I'm a soft touch when it comes to anything wildlife.
01:20 It's more or less been here ever since. It's been here since 2022.
01:25 It's come back from an injured seagull to what I would class as a fully healthy seagull but can't fly.
01:34 And I don't think it's ever going to fly.
01:39 [Sounds of the wind]
01:49 A lot of people that come into the garage are interested to see a seagull because you don't normally see that unless it's pooed on your car.
01:57 And you get to observe its kind of habits, its behaviour, its personality and every seagull does have a personality.
02:08 [Sounds of the wind]
02:24 It's quite cheeky. It likes when you're sat in the chair.
02:29 It may come over and because you've got shoelaces and eyelets on your boots, it doesn't have them.
02:35 And it likes to come over and tug away at that on occasion.
02:39 And I think it's interested in something that you've got that it's not got.
02:46 And one of the things with seagulls is that everybody assumes that they eat anything.
02:52 And I would say out in the wild that's probably true.
02:57 But when it's in this kind of environment, you know, it can be more picky about what it wants to eat.
03:04 And so I've had to go through this process of finding what it eats.
03:09 [Sounds of the wind]
03:24 It's very respectful I think of the fact that this is a working garage with people coming and going, you know, and it will stay out of the way of you.
03:32 [Sounds of the wind]
03:51 [Sounds of the wind]