This 12 months’s Massive Farmland Chook Rely (BFBC) has simply ended and I’m positive everybody was on the market ticking off the blackbirds and robins, and hopefully the skylarks and lapwings.
Although if final 12 months’s outcomes are something to go by, the probabilities are that crows and magpies could have been among the many high 10 birds seen round our fields.
The one Raptors to make the highest 25 in final 12 months’s BFBC have been kestrel and purple kite.
As soon as almost hunted to extinction, the purple kite has expanded its vary from Wales throughout a lot of the nation and, like buzzards, I’ll quickly be seeing them not not often however steadily in Kent.
See additionally: Opinion – CS scheme represents a misplaced alternative
Buzzard and purple kite have featured in a vigorous correspondence within the letters pages of this journal in latest weeks – not as feathered associates, however as bringers of demise to the younger of a few of these species comparable to lapwing we’d all prefer to see within the fowl depend.
An web search brings up headline-grabbing statements in regards to the decline of farmland birds and the unlawful killing of raptors.
Their potential impact on the inhabitants of different species is little mentioned, and glib statements that prime numbers show there’s an excellent meals provide don’t assist.
It’s an ecological truism that the inhabitants of the prey determines the inhabitants of the predator and never the opposite method spherical.
Apex predators want sources on the backside of the meals pyramid, after all; however what if that is being bolstered by different out there meals comparable to roadkill, sport birds and cattle?
Raptors are opportunistic; they’ll neglect their textbook meals supply and go for one thing simpler. They be taught new behaviours – to enter someplace unfamiliar, as an example.
None of this excuses laying poison bait for hen harriers, nevertheless it does clarify the frustration of anybody watching the brood of skylark they’ve seen hatch being worn out by buzzards.
In our farmed and densely populated panorama, many species battle to breed efficiently.
The primary motive farmland birds have declined could also be lack of habitat, however with out predator management we battle to guard and improve the numbers of those who stay.
Research present the advantages of a sturdy, authorized method to predator management. However what about raptors having fun with protected standing?
Decreasing the predation stress of raptors on wildlife utilizing probably the most satisfactorily humane strategies out there, because the Sport and Wildlife Conservation Belief (GWCT) phrases it, is greedy a nettle.
These strategies embody eradicating eggs and/or chicks to be hand-reared in captivity earlier than being reintroduced elsewhere, diversionary feeding, and restricted, licensed culls on a case-by-case foundation. Intervention to revive the stability of nature.
Nowhere is that this debate extra impassioned than on the grouse moors of north England, on the subject of the hen harrier.
But work by the GWCT and others exhibits when harrier numbers are excessive and taking pictures turns into uneconomic, then keepering is eliminated and their numbers, and people of different species comparable to curlew, plummet.
Rounding up some harriers and transport them off to Kent may be one reply, although I can see future letters in Farmers Weekly about it.
However culling raptors comparable to buzzards whose numbers have burgeoned? A nettle to know, maybe, however not prone to get Chris Packham’s approval.
