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Shooting of a Peregrine Falcon


kip270
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Oh that is priceless - pigeon enthusiasts aka pigeon loving antis have hired a hitman shooter to shoot peregrine falcons. How bizarre.

 

Well, it wasn't accidentally me - I did wonder how far 32g of No.6 shot could travel, but fortunatley I know it's not as far as yorkshire unless my shot pattern got on a train. Looks like 2 no. small calibre rifle / air gun shots.

 

At work there was a secretary whose family were mad keen on racing pigeons - I never let on what I got upto at the weekend because she was so pro RSPB it was painful - I remember someone mentioned they ran over a ferral on the way to work and she went potty.

 

Edited: However, and before the PWF nonsense brigade jump in, for clarity I do not condone or find funny the shooting of perigrine falcons or racing pigeons.

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I condemn the shooting of any protected bird, especially birds of prey.

 

Its interesting how the report said, that the post mortem showed that the bird had been shot on two seperate occasions in the past two months.

 

That doesn't suggest a shotgun shooting to me, more like a single shot weapon.

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Check the xray - two shots only

 

Neither piece of shot looks in a killing location. Could be air-rifle, could be very wide scatter from a shot gun.

Unlikely to be lead poisoning from the shot. My guess is the second choice.

The bird could have actually died from other, natural causes.

That said, clearly some nutter has taken a shot at it and tried to kill it.

Some people really are too stupid to be let loose with guns. :oops:

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Of course, if I was an anti, with their strange little minds, I might think "I know, I'll shoot a nice little raptor with my air rifle, 'find' its poor, broken body in the wood, and then I can let the Police and the RSPB know about it...SEE!!, all those hunter types are just wicked criminals!!"

 

Not that the anti brigade would ever stoop to such low tricks of course... :oops:

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conjecture, conjecture and media hype! Not the full story by a long way. You can come up with all sorts of scenarios from the info given but without the full facts who knows? Neither of those 'pellets' look life threatening and the bird most certainly wouldn't have died of lead poisoning. Peter Scott did a lot of work on how most wildfowl carry lead shot throughout their lives (I think it's about 80%) without any apparent harm. I guess pigeons must do also as well as plenty of game birds. I know a few hbs who have some lead in them and it's no problem. Lead poisoning in birds is (apart from the obvious) usually from ingesting the pellets whilst feeding and grinding them up in their gizzards, hence the ban on lead for wildfowling etc.

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There seems to be a lack of any real cause of death in that report. yes they mention its been shot twice but not that that caused death and looking at the positioning of the lead its probably unlikely.

I certainly don't condone shooting protected species but living in an area that is becoming over run with Kestrels and sparrowhawks it does make you wonder whether they will remain protected forever while we loose all our native song birds.

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