Hi,
£744 each for culling Ruddy Ducks?
Sir Lew Grade once said- on financing 'Raise the Titanic' - it would have been cheaper to lower the Atlantic.
Couldnt we have cloned some White headed Ducks for less? Or had the Spanish shoot the Ruddies in Spain for less? They shot most of the White headeds in the first place :)
I heard the rampant male Ruddies were probably from Holland anyway :(
S
For advice about Birding, Identification,field guides, binoculars, scopes, tripods, etc - put 'Birding Tips' into the search box
Hi Seymour
Wow.... you have a sensitive spot in many bird lover here
I have to admit I have never understood why there seems to be a continual UK 'hatred' towards Ruddy Ducks
There are lots of non-native wildlife in the UK, and the Ruddy Ducks get it in the neck each and every time
12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4
Our population of around 4000 wintering Ruddy Ducks, which are native to North America of course, apparently arose from escapees from the wildfowl collection at Slimbridge back in the late 1950s/early 1960s - which is an irony pointed out by a second correspondent.
.................including fraternising with the very local and Endangered White-headed Duck Oxyura leucocephala. A very small number of hybrids have been found and researchers worry that Ruddys are threatening the genetic purity of the latter species.
This is the whole argument and I would love to hear other views here. Too Cull or not to Cull?
Regards
Kathy and Dave
Yes leave our Ruddy's alone, we don't have that many of them, and let the spanish deal with them if they have such a beef with them. Like you say it was the shooting of so many white headed ducks that decimated the population, and numbers I see have actually risen since they became protected in 1977 from 22 to over a thousand now, they are after all doing what comes naturally.
There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed.