BYGONE BIRDING: 'GROUSE-SHOOTERS ARE FEW WHILE NATURE-LOVERS ARE MANY AND INCREASING'

                                                   

Buzzard - 'soaring flight is picturesque addition to the scenery'

Report from the Ealing Gazette & West Middlesex Observer of March 11, 1922 

On behalf of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Sir Montagu Sharpe, chairman, and Mr Frank Lemon, honorary secretary, have addressed the following letter to The Times:

"The attention of the Council of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has repeatedly been drawn to an account in The Field of December 10 of last year's activities of the Argyllshire Vermin Club. 

"Whilst appreciating the necessity of keeping down the numbers of predatory beasts and birds in the interest of creatures necessary for the support of man, we fear that such wholesale destruction as that described may have disastrous effect on the avifauna of the British Isles.

"It is the killing of 160 buzzards and 475 hawks which arouse our anxiety.

"We cannot help suspecting that there are species which it has been the persistent endeavour during the past half-century of naturalists and ornithologists to protect. 

"We also fear that in order to have accomplished so much, the killing may to some extent have been done by pole-traps and poison, the use of both being illegal. 

"In addition to their illegality, the use of such instruments is to be deplored, both on account of the cruel sufferings which they inflict on their victims and because of their indiscriminate action. 

"We earnestly hope that the executive officers of the vermin clubs of Scotland will see their way to draw up and enforce strict rules which will effectually prevent indiscriminate slaughter and which will forbid the killing of interesting and rare birds.

"These include white-tailed and golden eagles (the former well-nigh extinct in Great Britain), harriers, kestrels and merlins, as well as buzzards which are useful and innocuous and whose soaring flight is a most picturesque addition to the scenery and one which gives immense pleasure to nature-lovers.

"If we may be allowed to say som, the sight of native avifauna on its own ground is of greater value than is the rigid preservation of grouse because, whilst grouse shooters are few, nature lovers are many - and their numbers are increasingly the wide world over."