A seagull had to be freed from a car grille after somehow managing to get stuck and miraculously being unharmed.

The gull is believed to have been hit by a red Mazda 6, which was parked at the William Harvey Hospital in Ashford when a passerby noticed it.

RSPCA rescuer Tina Nash attended the incident last month, eventually prising the stuck seagull out of the grille.

She said: “The bird was completely wedged up behind the grille and there’s no way he’d have been able to get out himself.

“I expect he’d been hit by the car and the impact pushed him behind the grille but the driver was completely unaware, parked up in the car park and went off without any knowledge he was there.”

The unfortunate bird was taken into the charity’s Mallydams Wood Wildlife Centre, in East Sussex, to be monitored but it was found to have come out completely unscathed.

On July 16, he was released at Pett Level beach, in East Sussex, with a number of juvenile gulls who have been rescued by the charity in recent months.

Tina said: “After a road traffic collision and being stuck in the car grille like that I was convinced the poor bird would have major life-threatening injuries so to see him, just a few weeks, given a clean bill of health and released back to the wild with lots of other birds gives me a huge sense of pride.

“It’s rewarding moments like these that make me love my job.”

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