Buzzards

I live under the South Downs in the middle of the Cowdray Estate lands.  A number of pheasant shoots exist round me and hundreds of birds are released every year in and around the fields adjacent to my property.  There are about twenty feed stations for them in or near the wood I can see from my windows.

Every year I feed about 30 of these birds as they gravitate to the village of Bepton and take advantage of people who feed the smaller birds from feeders etc....    In other words they are a nuisance.  They eat the food meant for smaller song birds and other vulnerable native and migratory species as well as trampling all over my plants and eating flower heads as they appear in the spring.  Pheasants are, after all, akin to chickens!   They are also a NON NATIVE species introduced as a money spinning device for mass shoots during the course of which many birds are shot.  The market for such poultry is flooded and shoots sometimes find it difficult to dispose of the shot birds.

In my area we are blessed with an increasing bird biodiversity which did not exist ten years ago.  A number of these are birds of prey which had been reduced to highly endangered breeds through exactly the type of thing you are proposing to introduce.  This would be the thin end of the wedge and sooner rather than later  these breeds would again find themselves on the highly endangered list.  (After all the poaching of elephants increased dramatically after the fairly recent the one-off  sale of ivory.)

I have also noted that although pheasants abound in the field abutting my property and buzzards are circling overhead I have never witnessed any of these birds, or other birds of prey for that matter,  dropping down to prey on the pheasants.

Thus the number of poults taken would be described as infinitesimal.  Far more perish on the roads - probably hundred in this area alone.  Many are taken by foxes - I have seen this on my own land when a nesting bird's nest was raided and the female pheasant killed and taken away.  Yet no-one complains about this.

Pheasants are also in direct competition with our own native bird species and out-compete them for food and cover especially in the winter months.  

Our skies will be the poorer in the long run as will the thrill of seeing majestic birds of prey which are the delight of all but those with vested interests in the shoots.



Beatrice