Hen Harriers go missing ... again (3 Viewers)

[Boom]

The worry for Langholm is what happens when the project finishes, which is exactly the main concern of the people involved, some of the grouse have been radio tagged and some have ended up being predated by the Harriers and other raptors, unsurprisingly.
Langholm is without doubt an impressive place at the moment, and long may that continue, obviously left to their own devices the Harriers have been doing remarkably well, and credit to all parties involved, I just hope that in 5 years time the place won't have gone the same way as Bowland, which would be a crying shame as that place used to be an incredible site for a great variety of raptors.

 

[Farnboro John]

Langholm is without doubt an impressive place at the moment, and long may that continue, obviously left to their own devices the Harriers have been doing remarkably well

Actually I think you'll find the Hen Harriers have just been doing normally well. Hen Harriers are successful resident British birds - it's only intervention by twisted crooks that causes widespread failure. Were it not for criminal enterprise we would not be discussing Hen Harrier as a conservation issue.

John

 

[Sangahyando]

If they don't like wild animals eating their domestic grouse, they should do what normal people do and just fence the grouse in.

 

[Farnboro John]

If they don't like wild animals eating their domestic grouse, they should do what normal people do and just fence the grouse in.

I don't think we want to go down that road. I agree it unreservedly in respect of Pheasants and Red-legged Partridges put down for shooting, but I do not concede for a second either that Red Grouse are domestic or, importantly, that they belong to the landowners any more than the Hen Harriers do. They are British wildlife and owned by nobody: watching them is as legitimate an activity as shooting them is under current law.

John

 

[Boom]

Actually I think you'll find the Hen Harriers have just been doing normally well. Hen Harriers are successful resident British birds - it's only intervention by twisted crooks that causes widespread failure. Were it not for criminal enterprise we would not be discussing Hen Harrier as a conservation issue.

John

Ok John, "normally" well. Perhaps I was meaning in comparison with some other sites that have been discussed.

 

[Farnboro John]

Ok John, "normally" well. Perhaps I was meaning in comparison with some other sites that have been discussed.

I get that, I just don't want even Langholm shooters to run away with the idea that they are amazing just for being law-abiding. Hen Harriers don't need help, they just need an absence of criminal hindrance.

John

 

[Sangahyando]

I don't think we want to go down that road. I agree it unreservedly in respect of Pheasants and Red-legged Partridges put down for shooting, but I do not concede for a second either that Red Grouse are domestic or, importantly, that they belong to the landowners any more than the Hen Harriers do. They are British wildlife and owned by nobody: watching them is as legitimate an activity as shooting them is under current law.

John

Well, then the fact of predation by wild raptors and mammals must be accepted. My point is that landowners (or other people) who expect zero predation by naturally occurring animals on their free-range "game" must be living in some bizarro world.

 

[Boom]

I get that, I just don't want even Langholm shooters to run away with the idea that they are amazing just for being law-abiding. Hen Harriers don't need help, they just need an absence of criminal hindrance.

John

Totally agree.

 

[string boozel]

I have to agree with Farnborough John, if the illegal persecution stopped and the morons from We Forgot the Brains stopped their campaign of disinformation there would be no issue to discuss.

James.

 

[bgr]

Steady on there everyone. You are all heading for a heart attack. This all started with male Harriers going missing and it,s now snowballed into a Kangaroo court involving all gamekeepers and employers. Why not take a step back and come up with an alternative reason for their disappearance,(temporary or otherwise). They may still be flying somewhere else. I don,t know and neither do you. Show me the evidence!

 

[Farnboro John]

Steady on there everyone. You are all heading for a heart attack. This all started with male Harriers going missing and it,s now snowballed into a Kangaroo court involving all gamekeepers and employers. Why not take a step back and come up with an alternative reason for their disappearance,(temporary or otherwise). They may still be flying somewhere else. I don,t know and neither do you. Show me the evidence!

And next week on "Talking B*******"......

Most of us would have no difficulty with law-abiding gamekeepers (well some small difficulties but no legal quarrel, perhaps). However, all the evidence of how Hen Harriers exist where persecution is lacking, compared to the distribution map overlaying English Hen Harrier population onto suitable habitat onto game-managed upland moorland, demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt that gamekeepers, and by extension their corrupt, selfish, above-the-law employers, are responsible for the current situation due to a campaign of deliberate extermination.

Only the difficulty of mounting permanent, habitat-wide surveillance in the face of deliberate absence of co-operation from the aforementioned employers, who if they had nothing to hide would have nothing to lose by co-operating, obstructs and prevents the gathering of prosecution-quality data on these outlaw barbarians.

We know.

John

 

[John Cantelo]

Steady on there everyone. You are all heading for a heart attack. This all started with male Harriers going missing and it,s now snowballed into a Kangaroo court involving all gamekeepers and employers. Why not take a step back and come up with an alternative reason for their disappearance,(temporary or otherwise). They may still be flying somewhere else. I don,t know and neither do you. Show me the evidence!

Don't be so fatuous. It is well established that male Hen Harriers don't simply wonder off in the midst of the breeding cycle, particularly when young have hatched. For it to happen to one bird would be highly unusual, but for so many to disappear over such a brief period is extraordinary and can only be reasonably explained by deliberate persecution. When this happens in areas surrounded by estates dedicated to a sport where the presence of Hen Harriers is regarded with, shall we say, a robust antipathy then not to consider that industry and its agents as primary suspects would be absurd. The circumstantial evidence is overwhelming that malicious skulduggery is the cause of their disappearance. Frankly, you have to be a pretty dense gamekeeper to be caught as concealing your activities on large private estates isn't too hard. Like many here I know of gamekeepers who welcome birds of prey on their patch, but that shouldn't blind us to the fact that "old traditions die hard" (to quote Amanda Anderson of the Moorland Association) and that too many gamekeepers continue to persecute raptors.

 

[Coronatus]

bgr+
<They may still be flying somewhere else. I don,t know and neither do you. Show me the evidence!>
That's the point. The perpetrators are taking pains to leave no 'evidence!' What do you want? A Gibbet with spent cartridge shells in a box? In the absence of such tangible evidence most folks have to rely on circumstantial evidence.
Hen Harriers disappear from a certain restricted area. Peregrines are also much fewer in that same area. Eagle Owls after several breeding successes also vanish from that area. Now find the common denominator.
Persecution or some form of extraterrestial force?
Planes and yachts had the Bermuda triangle! I suppose you could argue that raptors have a Bowland Triangle.

Anybody interested there is a protest march organised from Dunsop Bridge on 9th August. All welcome!

 

[Robin Edwards]

Steady on there everyone. You are all heading for a heart attack. This all started with male Harriers going missing and it,s now snowballed into a Kangaroo court involving all gamekeepers and employers. Why not take a step back and come up with an alternative reason for their disappearance,(temporary or otherwise). They may still be flying somewhere else. I don,t know and neither do you. Show me the evidence!

Maybe using evidence from countless annual bird crime reports and those who know what happens to predator species on our uplands, you could throw in some balanced probability and suggest what has happened to our birds?

 

[Boom]

Steady on there everyone. You are all heading for a heart attack. This all started with male Harriers going missing and it,s now snowballed into a Kangaroo court involving all gamekeepers and employers. Why not take a step back and come up with an alternative reason for their disappearance,(temporary or otherwise). They may still be flying somewhere else. I don,t know and neither do you. Show me the evidence!

I'm afraid there is no alternative reason for male Hen Harriers to desert during the breeding cycle in these numbers, perhaps the landowners and gamekeepers should be the ones who should be providing evidence as to why this catastrophe has happened?

Just an idea........

 

[Farnboro John]

To quote Auric Goldfinger: "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time its enemy action."

Remind me how many instances we are talking about?

John

 

[trw]

Not sure which planet BGR is living on but maybe he needs to take a reality check, or,failing that, apply to join the Flat Earth Society.
Sorry to bang on about the Langholm project but just I been reading a book about birds of prey in the UK.
It tells us about the head gamekeeper who has no qualms about the co-existence of Hen Harriers and Red Grouse.
Probably the same man they interviewed on Radio 4.He described how dead chicks[and rats apparently] are left on feeding posts as diversionary food.He impressed me as a normal, decent, balanced human being.
Astonishingly the book also relates the story of a Hen Harrier arriving on a Northumbrian shooting estate.The gamekeeper actually approached a bird of prey group to ask for advice how help in supporting Hen Harriers on the estate.
Wonders will never cease!

 

[string boozel]

I think birders are more than ready to recognise and acknowledge those keepers that work within the confines of the law. Sadly the number of cases brought against employees of the shooting industry in regard to illegal raptor persecution demonstrates that not everyone plays ball.

If you consider the fate of all those species which can be legally controlled then it's not too much off a stretch of the imagination to believe that illegal methods of control are employed to reduce completion from raptors As others have said there is a worrying correlation between reduced raptor numbers and large shooting estates. Adult harriers do not have many predators in the UK though the Eagle Owls which also disappeared would have posed a threat had they remained. Nor do they or any other bird abandon a viable nest, it's completely against there instincts. If anyone truly believes that four adult harriers abandoned their nest to flit away on some flight of fancy then I have an Eiffel Tower they may want to buy.

There's little danger of me having a heart attack simply because the news is anything but a shock, it happens every year with depressing regularity. When I think of all the effort expended by organisations and individuals in their efforts to protect raptors that can be undone in a few seconds by a thoughtless individual I seethe. Until we can come up with an effective way of preventing such illegal practices then the debate will rage on, perhaps those staunch protectors of the countryside in the shooting industry will help us in our struggle.

James.

 

[Coronatus]

<< though the Eagle Owls which also disappeared would have posed a threat had they remained.>>
Perhaps. This was one of the reasons used by RSPB as why the Bowland Eagle Owls would not be missed. Fairly pathetic really as was their claim that Eagle Owls were never native to Britain ad could not be here naturally as "Owls don't fly over the sea!" And therefore they refused to confer protection under the Wildlife and Countryside Act.
Getting off topic slightly but I think worth mentioning. Harking to the entertaining Stoke RFF thread maybe next time Eagle Owls make it to your shores you could lob some rabbits or pheasants their way?

 

[string boozel]

Hi Coronatus, I was basing my Eagle Owl remarks on a conversation with some Spanish birders. While examining the remains of prey at two nest sites near Malaga they found that harriers as well as dogs and cats made up part of the diet. Of course that does not prove that Eagle Owls take harriers in the UK, it only suggests that it may be a possibility.

James.