Saturday, 11 April 2009

Time to get tough

It has been suggested that locating a plastic eagle owl near the Bloody hawks nest may be illegal so of course I will not be doing that . However someone needs to do something. So many folk talk about the decline in the number of songbirds, who has seen a thrush lately?

The UK Raptor Working Group reported in 1999 that there were 34,700 breeding pairs of sparrowhawks and it was generally agreed that there were probably the same number of singles. Each sparrowhawk devours three songbirds a day.


The total number of songbirds killed each year is in excess of 113 million. If the RSPB is serious about trying to stop the songbird decline, instead of blaming farmers and cat owners, it should allow a controlled reduction in the number of sparrowhawks too.

The sparrowhawk eats its prey alive, sliver by sliver until a vital organ is devoured. It pins the prey bird down and strips the feathers and then the skin until it then tears into the flesh to reache the vital organs . It can take up to 20 minutes for a larger bird to die, one of my doves for instance. By encouraging the use of bird tables among its members, all the RSPB is doing is to produce a slaughtering slab for the sparrowhawk.

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