Police Scotland is investigating the suspicious disappearance of two female peregrines from active nests in Dumfries & Galloway.
Both nest sites, at Dalveen on the Queensberry Estate (part of the Buccleuch Estates), were being monitored by experts from the Dumfries & Galloway Raptor Study Group. Eggs had been laid at both sites and the breeding females ‘disappeared’ between 21 April and 20 May 2016.
Anyone with information is asked to contact Police Scotland at Sanquhar on 101.
Good to see Police Scotland issue an early appeal for information. Well done!
News article on ITV website here
Peregrine photo by Steve Waterhouse
Raptor Persecution UK 
As is usual in grouse shooting areas, the presence of black holes makes raptors disappear without trace, it’s a well known phenomenon, the police are investigating.
I am confused ? if being monitored why was it not noticed earlier ? a whole month ?
Monitored in this instance would normally mean three visits throughout the breeding season to check on breeding success. It doesn’t mean the site was under constant surveillance.
Lets not pretend that the annual killing of protected predatory birds and mammals is not organised criminality.
A small minority profiting at the expense of entire communities.
It is well known that some go to great lengths to kill anything that is perceived to have a negative effect on grouse populations.
The targeting of peregrines is a well known annual practice at this time of year.
And for those that refuse to accept this, technology will prove you wrong……………
I had a conversation with one of tradesmen I employ regularly, and up came his hobby of keeping pigeons. He erupted when I mentioned Sparrowhawks and Peregrines, and announced he would shoot them if he caught them near his loft. The same mentality rules when it comes certain types of anglers, who do not have a clue about conservation and good angling practice. Otters eat fish and so do Cormorants, so they are fair game for snares and being shot. Whilst down at derelict land looking onto the Clyde, where Braehead is now, I met up with a man who had an allotment nearby, from where he could spot wildlife, and one day saw a seal. Later, I heard someone had shot it. Obviously, seals eat fish and only mankind is allowed to eat them, and get “sport” out of doing so. Once on an allotment in Pollok Estate, Glasgow, I was informed by a new plotholder that he had been killing Cockchafers, as he had read they were a menace to plants. As one very interested in insects, I had never encountered such a creature anywhere in that park. What he was killing was the Violet Ground Beetle, an insect that eats slugs, and useful to gardeners. Thank heavens Kingfishers eat Sticklebacks! It is the same mentality that has, throughout history, lead to pogroms and religious wars. We will never have peace for our endangered Birds of Prey, until an improved education system is created that will enlighten generations on respecting other life forms, and not to harbour medieval ideas about certain birds, mammals and insects being vermn, and must be killed. We have sections of our society that have been imbued by absolute nonsense about what can live and die in the countryside, as far as blood sport enthusiasts are concerned. What would go, would be the daft reverence shown to gamekeepers and other killers of wildlife, as it has been far too long inculcated that they alone are the guardians of the countryside. I have given up trying to reason with such entrenched belief about predatory birds and animals, being only fit for persecution. Those of my acquaintance who were rural reared, and who were fed roadkill, have my admiration for being able to eat dead foxes, hedgehogs or whatever was found flattened on the highway.
I am interested in who, of your acquaintance, eats road kill ? And can you not persuade them to perhaps change their diet and eat gamekeepers and hoi poloi? That would resolve the problem, or some of it.
We need to convince them that Everyone, All Beings, are entitled to their place in the world. It’s not OURS, to use and destroy as we might decide !! We ALL are the guardians of it, to guard and maintain for our children, and our children’s children. Children in school should be taught conservation and protection of the earth and it’s treasures, so they don’t grow up as takers, giving nothing to the world which provides for us all.
Bill Bryson in ‘Down Under’ mentioned a tourist who had gone bush in 1982, and not apprehended until 1999, who had lived predominantly on roadkill during that period. The mind boggles, but very fresh roadkill is probably OK to although I would never do it I’m afraid.
Have to agree I think most of us are most of the time far, far too restrained in hitting back at this crap. On a couple of occasions I have had people get all flustered and self righteous about our songbirds being killed off by raptors and the RSPB ignoring it. I’ve replied not through aggressiveness or abuse, but by being equally indignant and saying how come BOPs have not managed to depress songbird numbers in the tens of millions of years they’ve co-existed, and if songbirds weren’t eaten they’d probably starve to death instead, birds produce far more young than natural ecosystems can sustain. I also add that anti raptor groups are fronts for gamebird interests and you’d have to be a bit of a plonker to fall for their propaganda. It works – a bit of passion gets seen as conviction in what you’re saying, which is why the other side so often use (fake) it. Sadly on the RSPB facebook page when the shooters are using it as a platform for their usual crap – i.e there are no waders on RSPB reserves – the RSPB rarely if ever reply at all far less post facts and figures to disprove this shite. Pigeon fanciers, anglers, shooters – the general ecological ignorance is utterly shocking and the attitude because they’ve spent a bob or two on their hobby willdife can be slaughtered because they think it inconveniences them is arrogant and appalling selfish. If these people want to work with the conservation sector it’s for them to drop their idiocy not for wildlife groups to try and accomodate it which sadly they seem to have been doing all too often.
Yet another case of ‘probable’ raptor persecution, and this is on Roseanna Cunningham’s watch !
This one is interesting, and involves Roseanna’s Land reform brief as well, because WHO OWNS this estate ? If you have not yet read Andy Wightman’s excellent investigation into Buccleuch estates, see
http://www.andywightman.com/archives/4454
Please do something SNP, remember, you were elected to represent the people of Scotland, NOT just the landowners of Scotland. Act now, or this will continue unabated.