This whole business of wild hacking is an opening book for me. I’m finding out more and more as time goes on.
It’s not just Scotland, here is a long Youtube video from a site near Tamworth;
And here is their website and some prices for wild-hacked pure falcons, just in case you have a few grand going spare. I was interested to hear for how long these birds sometimes disappear on their travels.
I’ve asked NE about their role in licensing of wild hacking of falcons in England.
And yesterday evening SNH responded to the EIR request about their licensing of wild hacking in Moray and another Scottish site. I plan to tell you quite a lot more about this next week.
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More people getting involved in racing, says the farmer… Hmm. And eyewatering money! To the unscrupulous, this could be a very tempting combination. They won’t listen to the bit about it being a lot of work. Or that 10% get lost. And they won’t give a jot about the birds themselves!
As I’ve heard it said, these will be the best weeks of the birds’ lives, before they go off to where they don’t belong, to be bartered and sold, then raced or put to hunt in sizzling temperatures they’re not fit for.
Some birds go missing? If one of his birds went missing for 10 months, clearly backpack tracking devices come off. Who knows what the bird lived on during that time, or what friends it made whilst free! And apparently they can fly the ‘length and breadth of the country’. Wow!
And if crows are afraid of this pack of different falcon varieties, released 50 at a time, imagine what ground nesting birds think of them.
Does this farmer have any kind of licence? If so, who issued it and with what stipulations? 50 falcons at the hack at one time. Who regulates this? And is there any limit to the number of foxes they’re allowed to shoot to protect their business … sorry, their birds?
Just asking.
How come a lot more of these birds haven’t been seen by birders? All the fuss the twitchers make about rare things you’d think there would have been endless reports in the last few years.
m parry – yes I’m surprised that there aren’t more records. Perhaps the number of escaping/wandering birds is quite low, but that is something which we need to know more about.
It maybe the case that there are very few that go missing. This is not the main point however. It’s the scale of falcons flying around one area disturbing local wildlife. I am sure the bolder the birds become the more attractive they will be for racing or hunting in any future life.
They seem to be protecting their
financial interests above our local wildlife. Money before ecology again.
The telemetry may still work but they have no recall button. It only shows where these falcons are but no control over them.