BirdForum is the net's largest birding community dedicated to wild birds and birding, and is absolutely FREE!

Register for an account to take part in lively discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Cantelo" data-source="post: 1399633" data-attributes="member: 2844">Although we all tend to look to a single cause to explain natural phenomena, its a pretty fair bet that several causes are involved in the decline of the Black Grouse (climatic, land use, etc.).  What we can be fairly certain of is that this decline has little, if anything, to do with the numbers of birds of prey.   To think otherwise suggests that discredited Victorian attitudes to raptors, with all that entails, persist in some quarters that ought to know better. In the late 18th/early 19th Black Grouse were far more widespread than they are today - in addition to those areas where we expect to find them in the 21st century, they were found in Kent, Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire, Dorset, the whole of the 'west country', Norfolk, large parts of eastern England.  This was before the widespread massacre of raptors such as Red Kite Buzzard, harriers, etc.  by game interests so clearly a good population of Black Grouse is not inimicable to an equally  strong population of raptors.  It is only when numbers have been reduced to an absolutley minimal level by other factors that the loss of individual birds for whatever reason (including occasional predation by raptors) becomes a critical issue for the survival of the population.  This, however, is more a symptom of decline rather than a cause,</blockquote>