Fellow victim James Bryce, four, was attacked eating a sausage roll during a holiday in St Ives.
The seagull swooped down to grab the sausage roll from James' hand but missed and instead bit his finger, leaving a nasty wound.
His father Alex said that the incident had left James 'petrified' of seagulls and distraught as his parents cleaned and bandaged the open cut.
Mr Bryce said: 'We've been coming to Cornwall for years and seagulls have always been a problem, especially in St Ives, but things have definitely gotten worse.
'Five years ago if a seagull swooped for food it would have been a 'wow moment', now it's happening every five minutes and is more malicious.'
Headteacher of St Michael's School near to where Sue was attacked, Shaun Perfect, said the pupils were now banned from taking snacks out at break time for fear of an attack.
He said: 'The school is very mindful of the seagulls that nest on our school roof. Fortunately, they tend to land while the children are outside playing.'
The children were now banned from taking snacks out at break and picnics have been cancelled.
He added: 'There was an instance recently when several classes had to be diverted to avoid a baby seagull that was being watched by its mother on one of the quad areas.
they legit tried killing me once! I had chinese take out and wanted to eat it near the river and then they chased me until I ran into a mall near by! they chased me across the parking lot while I was screaming until I got into the mall it was devastating
That's a great black backed gull, the largest of all gull species. I've once watched an animal documentary of these gulls chasing after puffins and stealing their catch but eventually eating the puffins as well. These birds are opportunistic. They will eat anything they can swallow.
Part-time mountain sheep farmer, and rural development officer John McCrohan himself witnessed the deaths of two mature ewes in an attack by a number of gulls on his farm between Camp and Anascaul.
Mr McCrohan, brandishing a stick, barely fought off the gulls. However both ewes died. These were mature ewes, not yet shorn, yet the gulls managed to savage them through their thick coat of wool. The gulls used not just their beaks, but their claws also in the unprecedented attack.
Even when he intervened the gulls waited a short distance away
“I am convinced if I didn’t have that stick, they might have attacked me,” the farmer said on Radio Kerry on Wednesday morning.
Bridget O’Connor, a sheep farmer near Camp outside Tralee, recounted the same experience, last year. Generations of farmers had farmed the land but had never seen gulls.
Last March two lambs were attacked and Ms O’Connor, who witnessed the episode at around 6am, said the lambs were left in an awful state with their entrails torn out by the gulls.
They had been “gored to death”.
