Buzzards are a common sight over The Lodge these days and on a sunny lunch time I would now expect to see one or probably more. This bird's amazing recovery over the last few decades is well documented for Bedfordshire on the excellent website of the Bedfordshire Bird Atlas. This site allows you to compare the current (provisional) range of the buzzard in Bedfordshire with the previous distributions in the national Atlases organised by the BTO in 1968-72 and 1988-92. The previous atlases had just a few records, and none of confirmed breeding, but now buzzards breed across the county.
The lack of buzzards goes back a long way. In the Vertebrate Fauna of Bedfordshire written by J. Steele-Elliott and published in 1901, he writes ‘Although the buzzard has the honour of having its eggs specially protected by law in our county, there is little reason to believe that a pair would ever be allowed to nest again with us; for, particularly in such cases as this, it is one point to make a law and another to compel gamekeepers and others to keep it.’ Well, things have certainly moved on a lot since then - with a few notable exceptions.
The buzzard is a pretty easy-to-please bird of prey, eating a wide variety of prey including the occasional gamebird but also lots of earthworms, a few nestling crows and rooks, an awful lot of young rabbits, and the occasional mouthful of anything killed on the road. And it will nest anywhere from a cliff to a tree, and even occasionally on the ground, so it should find life pretty easy – as it does on the continent of Europe. It strikes me whenever I visit France, Spain or Germany how common buzzards are compared with similar-looking parts of eastern England.
I think Steele-Elliott had it right – people killing buzzards wiped them out over large areas of the country and then held them back. I celebrate the fact that illegal killing is greatly reduced – particularly in lowland areas such as Bedfordshire (less so, we think, in the uplands – but we’ll come back to that later in the week!). And, I think Steele- Elliott was also right that it was principally game interests that were involved in the killing of buzzards – with a few sheep farmers doing their misguided bit too perhaps. So why has persecution (and I think that is the right word for it in this case) apparently reduced so much? There must be several reasons.
There are now fewer gamekeepers in the countryside but also they are changing their ways and are much more enlightened than the gamekeepers of the past. In particular, one of the most destructive and illegal activities, the setting of poison baits, is much reduced. Laying out rabbit carcasses laced with poisons in the countryside is an indiscriminate and ghastly form of wildlife murder. Perhaps the aim was to kill foxes and crows but the reality was that a wide range of wildlife species, including the carcase-feeding buzzard, were put at risk, alongside domestic cats and dogs. The RSPB has campaigned long and hard to end the use of poisons, and we believe we have had some impact, but the invention of the Larsen trap has probably also saved quite a lot of buzzards.
Larsen traps are used to catch crows and magpies so that a gamekeeper can kill them. They work by having a tame decoy bird in one part of the cage and some tempting food in the other – all to attract wild birds to be caught. They are efficient and have made crow-killing an easier task. Some game-shooting estates operate tens of Larsen traps and kill hundreds of crows. With some clever night-sights on your rifle and a Landrover full of Larsen traps you don’t have to risk being caught using poisons.
Having said that things are much better in the lowlands, and that attitudes have improved greatly, I must give you some examples of the type of wildlife crime which is still far too common even if it is rarer nowadays. Both examples ended with gamekeepers being convicted.
Buzzards occasionally get attracted to crow traps and that’s what happened to one in the Chilterns in 2004. A member of the public brought it to our attention and RSPB staff then filmed two gamekeepers visit the trap and one of them clubbed the buzzard to death with a stick. On 21 April 2005 the two gamekeepers were found guilty of intentionally killing the buzzard and being in possession of its body. Each man was fined £2000 for killing the buzzard and ordered to pay £500 costs.
A more recent case involved two very brave gamekeepers who refused to kill birds of prey on a Shropshire game-shooting estate. Acting on information they provided the police investigated, with RSPB expert support, and in 2008 two gamekeepers pleaded guilty to a variety of wildlife offences. They each received suspended jail sentences, were ordered to do community service and had to pay costs. A diary was found which documented the killing of over 100 buzzards, many ravens and lots of badgers – all protected species. On this estate badgers were clubbed to death, buzzards shot and illegal traps set for birds of prey. This case is horrific. It illustrates how bad things can be – I’m definitely not saying that it is the norm but I praise the two whistle-blowers and I am glad that the RSPB was able to help bring this case to a successful conclusion.
It feels as though, in the lowlands at least, we are at a critical point in the history of widespread and illegal wildlife killing. Things are changing, more enlightened attitudes and practices are coming into existence. The impact of wildlife crime is still there but is diminishing - albeit slowly. But that's the problem - the progress is slow and whilst it is still the case that a gamekeeper can casually take a buzzard from a trap and bash out its brains with a stick or a massive campaign of killing of birds of prey can take place on a shooting estate as though 50+ years of legal protection are of no relevance at all, then the RSPB will continue to highlight these cases and call upon the shooting community - because that is where the problem lies - to clean up its act, stop pretending that all is well and work harder to rid itself of the bad apples.
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Tomorrow's blog will focus on red kites.