Jeffrey Lendrum, a notorious international falcon egg thief, has gone on the run in Brazil and there are fears he may well turn up back in the UK this year to go after peregrine eggs.
In January 2016 Lendrum, 55, was sentenced to four and a half years in jail after being convicted of being in possession of rare falcon eggs at Sao Paulo airport, enroute from Chile to Dubai (see here). However, he had recently appealed his sentence and the Brazilian authorities released him on bail pending his appeal.
He has since disappeared.
Lendrum has a string of previous convictions for falcon egg smuggling, dating back as far as 1984 in Zimbabwe. In 2002 he was arrested in Canada for stealing peregrine and gyrfalcon eggs. In 2010 he was sentenced to 30 months imprisonment in the UK (reduced to 18 months on appeal) after being caught with 14 peregrine eggs at Birmingham Airport. He’d stolen them from nests in south Wales and was enroute to Dubai (see here).
If you’re involved with monitoring peregrine sites in the UK, keep an eye out for this face.
Raptor Persecution UK 
An utterly sad man who desperately requires therapy.
Lendrum and other egg collectors receive hefty jail sentences in the UK, while it took until 2014 in Scotland for a gamekeeper to get a (much shorter) custodial sentence. No sympathy for egg collectors but it tells you a lot about the double standards applied where criminals on sporting estates are concerned.
Nothing sad or misguided. This guy is not an egg collector, he is a thief who steals wild falcon eggs for the falconry trade In the Arab Stats
Technically yes this man is an egg thief but he is no egg collector. He is essentially a illegal falcon dealer smuggling eggs throughout the world to be reared in the Middle East for falconry, making a handsome profit in the process. what is not clear is whether these eggs are stolen to order but what ever is the answer to that the buyers/ rearers must know that these are internationally stolen eggs/ chicks and therefore illegal . Sadly such moral terpitude seems to be ignored or forgotten in the desire for these birds. i have no sympathy for Lendrum he is an international wildlife criminal and deserves similar sentencing to drug smugglers and his customers if found should be prosecuted under Cites regulations.
I think we are all great lovers of our wildlife here and therefore this man , when captured, needs locking up and this would show others that this crime is not acceptable.
I was involved in a Zimbabwe national parks investigation of Lendrums [Ed: alleged] activities last century.
The removal of eggs from specially protected species from a National park is equivalent to removing a horn from a poached rhino and legal provisions exist for similar sanctions of both offences.
Because it was just [Ed: alleged] egg thefts, it was difficult to get the police/courts to appreciate this. The Lendrum’s narrowly avoided jail the last time, because we could not prove they were moving the eggs/birds out of the country beyond a reasonable doubt and our sources were too scared to testify due to the political climate at the time. We subsequently traced the routes the smuggled eggs took and this resulted in a number of arrests in the UK.
A more insidious part of the [Ed: alleged] crime was the record of polygamy and polyandry that the Lendrum’s recorded for the Augur Buzzards they were watching. This was published in a scientific journal and is the only record (that I know of) of any species having both these reproductive strategies on the planet!!! It is still quoted to this day. I’ve seen the original record – made by Lendrum when he was less than 10 years old while he was watching unsexed birds from over 200 m away. It does not stand up to close scrutiny at all.
Lendrum has many connections in the middle east falconry fraternity with their deep pockets and desire for exotic raptors. Where ever he has run to, [Ed: rest of this comment deleted as libellous]