Please see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/8286034/Magpies-and-crows-to-be-culled-to-protect-songbirds.html
This is bad on an epic scale. A hugely undesirable precedent, interfering with natural processes on the basis of bad science (or no science at all), a tiny pressure group apparently driving the agenda, and no apparent action by the authorities to, at least, explain what is actually going on (though the Telegraph might have missed it).
This is indeed a black day for biodiversity.
Every day a little more irate about bird of prey persecution, and I have a cat - Got a problem with that?
Why does man need to keep trying to play God with wildlife? The cap is too big for any man to wear so the answer is to leave well alone.
"Birds are, quite simply, little miracles - and as such they require care and consideration."
Magnus Ullman
My Flickr account is here
I live in a small village and we have magpies around,and no doubt they take young birds
etc,but we also have cats,and in this area a darn site more cats than magpies,and I have reg seen these "pets"wandering about with young birds,voles etc in their mouths.
I read an article not long ago where they had tracked a number of cats for a couple of weeks and found on average they where taking 3 birds each per week,seeing there are about 11million cats in the country I would say the "domestic cat" has a greater effect on the songbird population.
That coupled with the removal over the years of hundreds of miles of hedges and the use of pesticides removing the food source from the songbird population ,I think that yes corvids will have an effect,but they will be well down the list on what the greatest cause of loss is.
In this area of lincs many hedges have been torn up to form huge fields and what hedges there are are annually flailed to about 3ft in ht.
ps we have just added up the number of cats that we know are pets in a 100yard radius of our house and it comes to 11 in total that we know of.
I know what I would reduce in number.
Des