The Villain Of The Piece

Birds of prey do pose a problem for gamekeepers, but are we looking at the right culprit, asks Matt Cross

It was a case of “don’t quote me on any of this”, “strictly off the record” and “you never got that from me”. Phone call after phone call no one seemed to want to talk about raptor predation. The gamekeeping organisations were keen, the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) was helpful, but no individual would put their name to anything.

I phoned, emailed and texted, I even appealed on social media. I had made it very clear that I didn’t want to discuss the tediously controversial issues around grouse and harriers. Instead, I wanted to know what effect buzzards, sparrowhawks, goshawks and tawny owls were having on pheasants and partridges. Everyone seemed to have a view but almost no one was willing to put their name to it.

A former headkeeper was adamant: “They can be a real problem.” A leading scientist sighed and said: “It’s convenient for a keeper to blame something they can’t do anything about.” Neither would go on the record. Unlike the issues around harriers and grouse, the divide over raptor predation of released game birds is within the shooting community. There are those who maintain that raptors are a growing problem and those who claim that “losses are usually insignificant”.

Not only are there strongly held views and an almost wilful lack of communication, but there is also a lack of science.

The anecdotal evidence is pretty damning. In Inverness-shire, where feeding stations have created huge localised populations of red kites, a keeper described them chasing his birds around in the pens until they injured themselves crashing into the wire. Further down the east coast, another told me how, in one night, a tawny owl had killed 10 birds, taking the heads and leaving the bodies.