Songbird Survival got involved in a discussion with @HenryHenHarrier and myself (@markavery) at the weekend, but their Twitter account seemed to go a bit bonkers. In response to every question about Songbird Survival’s views, they tweeted about Spoonbills at Holkham. Their top trump appeared to be a review of Holkham Hall on tripadvisor. Ooh err!
This fails to answer the perfectly reasonable question ‘Which studies of predator/prey relationships does Songbird Survival regard as having ‘serious doubts’ about their ‘quality and findings’? It’s a question that the boss of SS, Keith Cowieson, fails to answer on this blog. This may be because SS itself funded a study of the impacts of predators on songbirds which found little evidence of any impacts. An inconvenient truth, or if not a truth then certainly a substantial piece of science which had the input of the GWCT too.
It is widely thought that Spoonbills are largely immune from Sparrowhawk attacks.
The former Viscount Coke of Holkham Hall, now eighth Earl of Leicester after the death of his father last week, is a trustee of Songbird Survival.
Songbird Survival has distributed thousands of leaflets saying that previous science on predator/prey relationships of songbirds and raptors etc is a bit unreliable – but won’t say which studies they mean. SS seems amazingly eager to slag off previous science and amazingly reticent to explain what they are on about. Come on Keith Cowieson – what are you on about exactly?
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