Last week RaptorPersecutionUK highlighted this letter in the Telegraph. It stands as a monument to a largely bygone age, an age of intolerance to people and some wildlife species too. It is the antithesis to progress and enlightenment. These views are not completely gone, but it’s good that they are going.
I assume that the author is the same Bill Makins who set up what is now called Pensthorpe Natural Park in the late 1980s.
When he says;
the sea eagle has been described as a flying barn door, such is its destructive capacity as a bird of prey
…I wish he had gone on to elaborate on the impacts of barn doors on wildlife. It must be my only semi-rural lifestyle that means that I have never seen a barn door pounce on an endangered species and I’m unaware of their impact at a population level. What a sheltered and cloistered life I have led compared with real country folk. But he is right, White-tailed Eagles are as harmless to wildlife as barn doors – they should be unremarkable parts of the landscape.
Apparently;
There is no doubt that even smaller predators already cause huge problems for endangered farmland birds. Thrush populations have dropped disastrously in recent years.
Not according to the BTO they haven’t. The Breeding Bird Survey trend for Song Thrush in the East of England is a decline of 2% between 1995 and 2018 (page 24 of report). And lest anyone thinks that I am just picking the region (which is the one Mr Makins refers to) that suits my sarcastic comments here, the England-wide trend for Song Thrush is a 22% increase (1995-2018 again). Mr Makins speaks confidently but with lack of correctness. It’s almost as though he is living in another world, possibly around 20 years ago, but quite possibly a century or more ago, where anecdote was king and the facts (and experts) didn’t matter at all.
The real problem is, to turn Mr Makins’s words around, that ill-advised extirpations of our native species are difficult to wind back even when irreversible damage has been wrought. Progressive landowners are showing the way.
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I would not be so quick to dismiss Mr. Makins. It’s widely thought that the cycle of lemmings in the Norwegian arctic is driven through persecution by Sea Eagles. In fact, it’s well known in those parts that the poor rodents will hurl themselves off cliffs and desperately try to swim across the Norwegian Sea to reach Scotland and seek refuge from these vile predators. Sadly that option of safety is no longer available to those poor creatures.
This article from Look & Learn confirms it
https://www.lookandlearn.com/blog/14382/the-bizarre-suicidal-journey-of-norwegian-lemmings/ though the author having never had the misfortune of seeing an eagle has drawn Snowy Owls by mistake.
“though the author having never had the misfortune of seeing an eagle has drawn Snowy Owls by mistake”
I’m not sure she had ever seen a snowy owl either – they look like tawny owls!
Don’t dismiss the impact of barn doors too quickly, Mark. When Jon Wetton, Dave Walters and I were researching extra-pair fertilisations in House Sparrows, we had a colour-marked population near Nottingam. One indvidual was known to be especially ‘promiscuous’, mating with several females to whom he was not paired. Known as ‘Tom’ in honour of a colleagues who also enjoyed the ladies, he was resident in one of the barns and so was regularly trapped. One particularly windy day, Tom was lurking in his barn when Jon and Dave arrived. He headed for the door which got caught in a paticularly strong gust of wind and swung shut. Jon recalled looking through the binoculars and seeing the colour rings as Tom slid to the ground – never to cuckold again.
David – nice story
Well said Mark you are quite right of course.
Those individuals that creep out of the Victorian age need to visit Northern Europe and Scotland where raptors have been reintroduced with negligible impact on wildlife. In this country we seem to have much more than our fair share of ignoramuses and those with views residing firmly in the.Victorian age.
I think I’m right in saying that Pensthorpe Natural Park was once ‘home’ to BBC Springwatch, which would have made it interesting if Mr Makins hadn’t sold it a few years before. Perhaps in 100 years time people will look back at the attitude of people like Mr Makins, very much as people do today about the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorious), once the most numerous bird in the world, said to number in the billions and block out the sun.
“The aquiline profile of a sea eagle”. Aquiline meaning eagle-like. Top journalism right there.
Given the Daily Telegraph’s obvious and frequently expressed love of birds of prey (ahem), I assumed the caption was intended to draw a comparison between the appearance of a species in the genus Haliaeetus and that of the species in the genus Aquila!
Mr Makins of course is talking utter tosh, from a fortunately bygone age but there are others out there with similar views, especially in the countryside set and gameshooting and they along with Mr M will be spreading this poisonous crap with relish ( gentleman’s?). there are of course those who will be susceptible to these views and take them as gospel, so it needs to be countered at every appearance. Those who shout loudest and all that.
Spot on! Not challenging even the most blatantly ludicrous remarks will give them a sort of passive credibility. The issue isn’t about changing the attitude of who made the comment, it’s not letting the ‘bystanders’ get sucked into the crap. I sometimes worry that how easy it can be for even rational people to get the wool pulled over their eyes is seriously underestimated. Some of the propaganda from the other side has been very slick as well, if you’ve managed to get a valid point out beforehand to any new viewers that’ll hopefully help them see through the glossier stuff.
Extraordinary to call predator “vile” when all it is doing is what nature intended. I wonder if the author has the same view of tigers, lions, owls, domestic cats or sharks? Should all animals that kill other animals be destroyed? Let’s extend that logic to the planet’s most dangerous predator shall we? Farewell the human race.
To be fair, thoroughly misguided though it was, Mr Makins’ letter did not use the word ‘vile’. The only use of this word on this page was in Stuart MacKay’s comment where he refers to “these vile predators”, but I am fairly certain that Stuart’s comment was satirical in intent.