If you asked your average member of the public what they thought a duck pond was, I’d wager that most of them would talk about an idyllic small pond on a leafy village green, where a handful of wild ducks live and breed with relatively little stress, sometimes visited by local adult humans with small toddlers who want to see/feed the ducks as part of a peaceful outing.
I used to live in a village with such a pond and the biggest threat to the ducks was being run over on the main lane through the village, but every year the village residents would erect hand-made ‘duck crossing’ signs urging drivers to slow down. On the whole, it worked.
I doubt very much that the average member of the public would describe a duck pond as a massive vegetation-free mud pit, ridiculously over-stocked with semi-tame reared ducks that are fed with sack loads of barley to keep them at the pond so that paying clients can turn up in the shooting season in the autumn and blast them to smithereens for a bit of a laugh.
And yet that’s what’s happening on ‘sporting’ estates in the UK, with anecdotal reports of an increase in released ducks in recent years due to the shortage of pheasants and partridges available to be imported from abroad in the bird flu pandemic.
This grim image has been sent to me by a walker in Scotland. She told me it was one of two such ‘ponds’ on this shooting estate in the Scottish Borders, which also offers partridge and pheasant shooting. These ducks have been released here in the last few weeks, in readiness for the start of the shooting season on 1st September.
It would be fair to say that not every duck-shooting pond looks as bad as this – I’ve seen others that are not so blatantly over-stocked and have been created to provide a really good wildlife-enriched habitat, although there are still issues about the ethics of duck shooting in this way – there are plenty of reports on the internet of ducks circling round and round, trying to land on a pond whilst trying to dodge the guns. Each time they come around they fly higher and higher, resulting in many of them being ‘winged’ and maimed because they’re just out of range for the guns. It’s an appalling carnage.
Here are the same semi-tame ducks seen in the above photograph, in anticipation of being fed.
Although many sporting estates offer ‘mixed bag’ days that comprise pheasant, partridge and duck (typically mallard), it’s both alarming and ironic that the reported increases in duck shooting has been caused by the lack of pheasants/partridge poults due to the prevalence of highly pathogenic avian flu.
You might recall that the RSPB recently repeated its call for a moratorium on the release of gamebirds, and ducks, due to the risk of them spreading highly pathogenic avian flu to wild bird populations (see here). DEFRA ignored the call. Ducks and other water birds are especially susceptible to avian flu and I can’t imagine that over-stocking like that shown in these two photographs is going to minimise the risk.
The shooting of semi-tame ducks for ‘fun’ hasn’t attracted as much attention as pheasant and partridge shooting, probably due to the numbers (and thus environmental impact) involved (i.e. an estimated 60+ million non-native pheasants & partridges released annually in the UK compared with a vaguely estimated 3 million native mallards) but it definitely deserves more scrutiny, especially in this avian-flu era.
UPDATE 2nd September 2023: Minister admits DEFRA is clueless about over-stocked duck ponds for shooting (here)
Raptor Persecution UK 
It happens near me in Northants on a Site of Special Scientific Interest. The information board stating anyone disturbing the birds risks a fine of £20000 has been removed and replaced with a sanitised version. I’ve even seen a speedboat chasing off the ducks and geese so they fly over the guns. It’s like a war zone and shots can be heard for miles around, quite disturbing in more ways than one.
One of the shooting estates near me has a vehicle track either side of the duck pond. Some of the semi tame ducks seem to learn that staying put means you stay alive. So a rope is stretched between two quads and dragged across the surface of the pond forcing them to fly and be blasted out the sky. More basic than a speedboat but same effect. It can be no more difficult to shoot these birds than at a fairground.
Something similar here. The ducks don’t fly so a rope with red&white plastic pieces attached is stretched across the pond (I believe the shooters call this ‘sewelling’) and lifted up & down repeatedly to scare the ducks. At the same time two people in a rowboat on the water beat the pond surface with their paddles. Shot ducks are then stuffed into barrels to rot or hung up and left to rot or be eaten by rats! The rat infestation is humungous to say the least. Great sport had by all!!
I understand that Prince William is teaching his son George, age 10, to shoot. PW is patron of bird protection charitis/organisations. He was hawking the boy around various shoots when he was five years old. I regard this as child abuse. Apparently Kate enjoys shooting so no doubt they will be teaching all their children to shoot. I complained to the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), they replied calling it “management”. One “charity” to tick off my list. And so the cruelty continues. Utterly shameful !
“PW is patron of bird protection charitis/organisations.”
Not quite true: he is Patron of the BTO, but the BTO is not a ‘bird protection charity/organisation’. Which is why the BTO couldn’t care less whether he shot ‘game birds’ or not…
David Jackson It must be very distressing to hear guns blazing away. As to the speedboat chasing off the ducks and geese so they fly over the guns, these people must be complicit in this barbarity. The poor birds must be terrified. Some humans haven’t evolved over time.
Shooters release about 100 semi-tame mallard in August annually on a pool that’s a SSSI and part of a recently declared NNR. Last year AI arrived at the same time as the ducks’ release. So I wrote to NE and Lancs WT this year suggesting they stop the releases this year. Didn’t even get a reply. Bur not surprised.
Duck shooting occurs on the Severn nest Bewdley.
This is alongside the Severn bridle path and the heritage train route.
Members of the public are expected to get out of the way while the ducks are shot and then carried off by the river
I remember around 30 years ago when I was living on an estate keepered by a SGA Committee member, xxxxx xxxxxI used to watch him arrive at the “pond” in his landrover and jump out with his dogs in tow. The dogs would round up all the ducks and guide them back to the “pond.”
Every year when the season opened the pegs would go up and await the paying clients to arrive where a massacre would take place.
Most everyone would arrive khaki clad and blast off. This was at the mouth of one of the Angus Glens where they had another wee loch about half a mile distant where expensively clad “anglers” would show their prowess by catching densely stocked rainbow trout.
Both were charades, much like the Driven Red Grouse shooting, which took place further up the hill but themed to look lime it was skilled backswoodsmen doing the “hunting” rather than costumed customers.
Aye, it’s a bin geyn oan fur a lang time noo.
Yes, the ‘costume’ element of these things has always left me a bit nonplussed. I always knew my father was off shooting back in the 70s when I saw him dressing up in tweeds and plus-fours, reminiscent of an Edwardian gamekeeper! Everyone else at the time was wearing flares …
Whenever someone goes gooey-eyed about how ‘wonderfully British and traditional’ this activity is I ask them whether they would feel the same if these people were releasing 60m parrots into our countryside and dressing up as clowns at the weekend to shoot them (and then burying them)? “Oh, but it’s not the same,” they say. Really? Releasing 60m colourful non-native forest birds (pheasants) into our countryside and dressing up (in Edwardian gamekeeper’s) costumes to shoot them at the weekend is only different in the details. It’s still borderline insane, not to mention cruel, polluting and wasteful…
But it does put billions into the local and birds are not blasted to pieces otherwise they would not be any good to go into the food chain.
So do these. So what’s your point?
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/drugs-and-prostitution-worth-ps10bn-to-uk-economy-9454250.html
The reason we retained so much woodland in the UK is down to feild sports go to New Zealand and woodlland were ripped up to make way for dairy farms Anyway i would rather be a pheasant and have a 50 50 chance of survival than a meat reard chicken killed at 10 weeks
Not doing a very good job on the woodland front, are you?
https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/state-of-uk-woods-and-trees/
And…
“16% of released pheasants survived until after the shooting season.”
https://www.gwct.org.uk/research/species/birds/common-pheasant/fate-of-released-pheasants/
While we’re at it, would you also like to tell us how much upland woodland benefits from the grouse shooting sector (acres or hectares, either will do)?
https://revive.scot/publication/a-better-way-how-an-alternative-to-grouse-moors-could-help-tackle-climate-change-increase-biodiversity-and-benefit-scotlands-people/
You could go vegetarian – nothing dies then except a load of carrots (other veg available).
Field sports are not needed now to keep the tiny woodland copses going in our countryside. There are grants to plant trees for carbon sequestration. Done well this can increase biodiversity at the same time.
Billions? Shooting industry figures on the value of shooting to the economy have been shown to be grossly inflated.
“But it does put billions into the local…” into the local what? Pockets of the landed aristocracy?
“and birds are not blasted to pieces otherwise they would not be any good to go into the food chain.”
Lead contaminated game meat in the food chain, eh? And you think that’s good?
Why not take up a hobby where no living creature is blasted out of the air for amusement. Every living creature has its own right to exist.
“All creatures love life and fear death” The Buddha
Of course ‘townies’ just don’t understand!!!!!
That really pisses me off as well!
As someone with an interest and background in freshwater life and ponds especially, there is another concern here. Unnaturally high numbers of ducks can have a serious negative impact on a pond, especially smaller ones. They can eat all the vegetation, stir up the bottom mud to the extent the water becomes cloudy, killing off any submergent plants their excrement can increase the bioload/amount of nutrients and this causes all sorts of issues with algae and many species of invertebrate and amphibian will not survive in ponds devoid of vegetation and/or high in nutrients. And the duck can act as predators of these too, though I suspect this is less of a threat.
Put massive numbers of duck ina small area and the ponds locally will end up with unnaturally high numbers of ducks and the issues above occuring
Well said, Neil. Duck shooting as described is like shooting fish in a barrel. No skill required, just deep pockets to carry a shedload of toxic cartridges. C’mon DEFRA, you need to be sampling many more than you do.
Ashamed to say that I didn’t realise that this was going on. For DEFRA to connive at its perpetuation during the present avian flu outbreak is abhorrent and raises dark suspicions of blatant political interference. Yet another example of how the “leisure pursuits” industry has come to the aid of medieval methods of slaughter.
As soon as you think the shooting industry has reached its nadir, they find a new low
Let’s face it this article says more about the miscreants amongst the wealthy that get their kicks out of slaughtering defenceless creatures than anything else and an awful lot of these cruel idiots are employed by organisations such as DEFRA…. perverts will always back each other up and it is seems to me something that will not change with a cross from conservative to Labour they will be no better the press are about as much use as a chocolate fireguard and have no interest in publicising this atrocious behaviour…The BBC seem to by a breeding ground for various perversions. A “nation of animal lovers” my arse.I just pray to God United Utilities do stop the slaughter on their land.
I shoot, im not rich,or a perverted, im just a working class man as most people who shoot are
Come off it mate.. “most people”? You may think we’re all ‘townies’ on here but actually some of us know a lot about shooting and what goes on in the countryside. Why? Because we live here and have eyes in our heads…
Just another sick version of so called sport by the guardians of the countryside.
People who derive pleasure from ending the life of a sentient being will go to any lengths. Avian flu and legislation won’t stop their destructive activity.
One well known North Yorkshire estate (xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx) does this on part of a disused gravel pit los and lots of released “mallard” Shot as the last drive of the day so many guns may not bother changing to non lead.
An excellent point, it being traditional in some places to round a pheasant shoot day off with ducks at dusk. It beats me what sort of a kick these people can possibly get out of this, where the only skill involved is ensuring that you’re not shot by your neighbouring gun.
I’m from ‘the inside’.
This amount of ‘quarry’ is not common, but all the same it’s vile.
A bit like the big bag pheasant days.
Just stocking massive numbers for the slaughter is indefensible.
In my opinion, if you have to introduce something to the natural environment to hunt for sport there is something wrong.
Luckily a bigger percentage of the ‘sporting world’ thinks the same way, the ‘guns’ on these places are rarely anybody with any understanding of the natural world, just trigger happy clowns that are trying to live up to the stereotype they think there money deserves.
As I have said before, we probably need to stop getting our knickers in a twist over some things we have no control over.
Own the land and then it can be run how you want it to be run.
But please take on board, the majority of the environment’s created due to the shooting fraternity benefit a multitude of species that we all want to see prosper.
Without this environment they will dissappear unfortunately, farming will be the next thing to take over the land with less regard for a favourable environment for many species.
Is there room for us all in these spaces?
Is this like the “if we don’t eat animals they will all become extinct” argument?
I have also heard something similar from what you are saying, and know someone who has stopped shooting because of what he describes as the new generation of shooters who have no interest whatsoever in conservation and simply want to to shoot as many birds as possible. He describes many of them as poor shots, who try and shoot birds they have little chance of killing cleanly and instantly- which is contrary to the BASC code of good shooting. What infuriated him the most was that when these so called shooters failed to achieve big bag sizes they would often blame the keeper for the lack of birds, rather than accept that it was really their lack of shooting skills and willingness to accept that shooting should be part of wildlife conservation, and large bird numbers weren’t always guaranteed.
This would appear to me to be the real face of commercial shooting. The reality is that these shooters who only want large numbers of easy to shoot at birds are probably what sustains much of the shooting industry, and as such dictate how many shooting estates choose to operate to attract this “unethical” clientele in order to generate revenue.
This is simply part of the downward spiral which could lead some estates to then engage in poor land management and criminal behaviour to ensure that they can produce sufficient game birds to satisfy the bloated egos of those shooters who want to be able to brag about how many birds they have killed, people who have little understanding of the consequences of what trying to produce such vast numbers of game birds actually means for nature.
How the shooting industry responds to this “new generation” of shooters is a question that the game shooting industry needs to find an answer to.
Should the the industry strictly follow the ethics and codes promoted by the BASC et al, which will probably result in reduced game bird numbers, and a loss of revenue, but lead to better conservation of wildlife?
Or does it pander to the desires of these unethical/ non conservation shooters, and run the risk of eventually generating a backlash of public anger which eventually causes politicians to legislate to control the industry?
I suspect some of those operating the intensively managed, unethical shoots probably won’t care, as they will have made their money, and will simply walk away leaving behind a countryside depleted of much of its wildlife.
Entirely agree with you.
I enjoy rough shooting, but not organised slaughter of farmed birds.
But without the shooting industry, the environment, diversity and ecology would suffer, and we would end up with more ‘green desert,’
The loss of management of moorland for grouse shooting, courtesy of United Futilities will please the anti – shooter brigade, but certainly won’t help the grouse, golden plovers, curlews, ring ouzel or merlins which rely on their habitat being managed and their generalist predators being controlled, in order to survive.
Sad, but true.
Again, this is pro-shooting propaganda guff. Grouse moor management is not in any way ‘conservation’. It is simply a form of commercial land management with a specific intended outcome; to produce an unnaturally high level of one species so that it can be shot at by paying customers.
Everything that happens on grouse moors is to that end, including muir burn, predator removal, land drainage, cutting access roads, spreading medicated grit, slaughtering mountain hares, raptor persecution etc.
The fact that some species survive this process is simply a by-product of them not interfering with the main purpose of the land management. To claim this as ‘conservation’ is not only disingenuous but also preposterous. It’s like a boarding school defending the abuse of children in it’s care by claiming they are at least ‘giving them an education…’
This blog episode has clearly brought out the shooters in their droves.
Just imagine if shooting had never been invented how could/would we possibly manage the land?!
None of the species you cite are dependent on shooting to maintain their populations. Have you ever bothered to wonder how they managed for millennia before the invention of firearms?
What do you think Red Grouse were doing BEFORE the management started?
Duck shooting is a terrible hidden occurrence the ducks are bred on mass and dumped usually at least a couple of hundred per pond but ducks require alot of food & most don’t get fed enough so wander off and die or actually too weak to fly so are pretty much shot off the ground. Even small rough shoots are not much better they will generally sit around ponds and shoot ducks flighting in many ducks will be shot & wounded but as its too dark they can’t find them so the poor ducks are left to a slow painful death and if they make it to the following day they will then be despatched if the gun bothers to come back to look for them.. shooting lead over all the countryside is shocking I’m amazed United Utilities allowed all that shooting on their land for so long just think how much lead is on the land and the water courses!!!!! High fly was shooting 500 mallards a day the shooting season just gone and because of the bird flu no one wanted to eat them so they just incinerated them all after each shoot, firstly how can that be acceptable to shoot so many ducks and secondary how can they come with the fact that they shoot for eating when they where burning them all. People don’t mind pheasants shooting that much as they see pheasants as stupid birds but the public is not aware of the duck shooting and I think they will be horrified by it if it is publicized.
Regarding shooting ducks lead is still being used as it is cheaper and hits higher birds better all they do is make sure they have a few non toxic cartridges in their pockets incase they get stopped.
Ok…an artificial pond….but once created it is part of the freshwater environment and should have good water quality. Probably has a discharge point that connects to natural land drainage.
I wonder what SEPA makes of this? A commercial operation. Absurdly high density of “livestock”. Animal waste and waste food going directly into the pond and ground water? Do they use vet meds? Its a bit like a Salmon farm without the diluting effects of the ocean. Salmon farms need a licence?
There’s some seriously sick people out there. They need help. What an awful way to entertain yourself. Needs to be shown on prime time TV.
Using lead shot is the fault of successive governments they stopped the anglers this country continues as the dirty old man of Europe but we are all.to blame for this 2 party money mad system.
Lead shoot bean band for years now for shooting over water,
“Repeated WWT investigations found that around 77% of duck meat sold as locally shot in England was illegally shot with lead, and this illegal activity has not improved over time. ”
https://www.wwt.org.uk/our-work/projects/tackling-lead-ammunition-poisoning/#:~:text=They%20are%20legally%20required%20to,in%20Northern%20Ireland%20and%20Scotland.
Walking the Catteran Trail several years ago I had to stop so a keeper could call birds to a specific pond using a whistle. He had several different calls, each one called birds to a different pond.
Another attendant feature of commercial duck shoots, that ought to be noted, is that the proportion of wounding is usually very high. Why? Because when pushed off (driven by beaters, etc) the ponds the ducks tend to wheel over / back around the Guns very high in tight groups anxiously quacking to one another as to what the f-k is going on, and trying unwisely to return to their pond, sometimes making one or more passes over the line of Guns. The Guns below generally take this as a golden opportunity opportunity to prove what great hairy-testicled alpha-males they are by letting blaze with heavy-load cartridges at excessive ranges – that in reality only the very best most experienced Guns can hope to kill cleanly at. Plenty of videos on YT unashamedly showing just that. I have seen some of the collateral damage of those birds that make it back to the pond when feeding them the next day. After a hard frosty night especially badly pelleted ones will be found already dead on the pond / in the margins, while other walking wounded are polished off by keeper, etc with the .22 LR and dumped in the midden / stinkpit. It’s the good old circle of death again…
It has been obvious for a while that DEFRA and APHA were being forced into a scenario that meant the shooting season was unaffected. They are both happy to see wildlife destroyed and both so focussed on chicken and turkey farms, like ostriches have their heads in the sand, DEFRA / APHA, the more outbreaks you get in the wild, the more you get in the farms! That said, bird flu shouldn’t be so prevalent this year with immunity now set in. Susceptibility of sea birds hasn’t continued within the populous waterfowl and to be honest, struggling to work out how this can reignite for 2023.
“That said, bird flu shouldn’t be so prevalent this year with immunity now set in.”
You can’t become immune without surviving an infection. Species/colonies which have escaped mass-deaths from avian flu will have no immunity…
In the last few weeks there have been notified outbreaks in West Sussex, Cumbria, and several in Kent.
This has gone through the waterfowl, we’ve seen birds have this 4 times last season from September until March, each time reducing in time frame. Blackck headed gulls, waterfowl living within areas of significant mortality within the gulls with only day 1 or 2 symptoms. Gulls and seabirds as I said, more susceptible to low volumes of the virus. However, less virus and outbreaks due to immunity within the waterfowl, it reduces. Problem is, it is visible from day 1, confirmed on the second day, those taking cash to investigate do nothing, RSPB etc… lazy! They’ll say noticeable day 10 or 11. Immunity is out there, gulls, seabirds and more at risk, the young with no immunity. I like to talk through, please don’t discount.
You wrote “Susceptibility of sea birds hasn’t continued within the populous waterfowl”, but the evidence is that morbidity and mortality is also dependent upon which strain of Avian Influenza is involved.
A cursory search reveals 25 subtypes of influenza as being recognised to be of avian origin, with subtypes H5 and H7 low pathogenic avian influenza able to mutate into the highly pathogenic HPAI.
You claim “This has gone through the waterfowl, we’ve seen birds have this 4 times last season from September until March” without evidence of such ‘re-infections’ from the same strain.
“gulls with only day 1 or 2 symptoms” – but no such categorisation exists. DEFRA/APHA list 19 ‘signs’, one of which is as crude as ‘sudden death’!
You claim “Gulls and seabirds as I said, more susceptible to low volumes of the virus”, without evidence of the viral load, or the strain concerned.
You continue “Problem is, it is visible from day 1” which is untrue, according to the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, which claims the “incubation period is variable (1 – 7 days) and dependent upon the strain, dose, route of exposure and species of bird.”
The World Organisation of Animal Health “recognises a 14-day incubation period at the flock level for high pathogenicity avian influenza”
Finally, you claim “those taking cash to investigate do nothing, RSPB etc… lazy!” Really? The RSPB made an appeal for funds to arrange tests, protect vulnerable populations and safely remove carcasses. So where is your evidence that the RSPB has ‘done nothing’?
You still consider mortality at 100%? More like 20% in swans for example but only in an outbreak scenario. Much less if this is avoided.
I wrote “You can’t become immune without surviving an infection” and you replied “You still consider mortality at 100%?”
So, how did you arrive at that?
You wrote “More like 20% in swans for example” yet the BBC report a 40% drop in Mute Swan cygnets this year (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66317374)
Just stop killing animals and birds for fun it’s sick if you do that for fun you need some serious therapy The wildlife is already suffering go and do something less ugly and distructive with your time and perhaps people will like you better when you don’t go on and on about how much fun it is to kill animals and birds
Another species tortured by the shooting industry. The shooting estates need to be shut down, full stop. They cater to disturbingly cruel individuals, disrupt and damage the natural balance of the environment and wildlife in their locality. They have no redeeming qualities. The term ‘conservation’ shouldn’t be anywhere near any description of such estates or organisations that represent them.
Shame on DEFRA for supporting grouse shooting etc. claiming it “benefits” the environment. These shooting estates burn the heather where ground nesting birds are. I’ve worked with people who are involved in shooting and hunting. They are all arrogant. Therese Coffey isn’t interested in wildlife and caring for the environment.
Worth pointing out that I know of several guns who categorically will not shoot where there is a duck drive. Unlike wildfowling, which is both dangerous and requires venery, driven ducks are a repellant aspect of shooting. And before you all leap in, I do not kill wildlife unless it is ‘one for the pot. I am a passionate defender of true venery and against so-called ‘sport’ shooting..
Is this anti field sport/farming/ avicultral site which wants to abolish everything?
Im a shepherd and self made livestock farmer, breed schedule 3&4 birds, i encourage green plover and have 40 pairs on our land.
We do that by controlling fox and corvids.and i work with other farmers and keepers.
I suggest you change the site name to against livestock farming, shooting and aviculture.
The best places for many ground nesting birds curlew, plovers etc is on land were pest species are controlled.
We have more plover than many so called reserves and they rear far more due to cutting hay in August and pest control.
Pest species only exist in the minds of some humans, Stephen. Not in a balanced natural environment.
” i encourage green plover and have 40 pairs on our land.
We do that by controlling fox and corvids.”
And how did Green Plovers survive before there were people to ‘control foxes and corvids’?
How did any ground-nesting species survive before there were people to ‘control foxes and corvids’?
What are you doing so wrong that you feel you have to ‘control foxes and corvids’ on your farm? After all, ground-nesting birds only nest for a short period of the year. What are all your foxes and corvids feeding on for the rest of the time?
People need to make a living by shooting when land cant be farmed it’s a person’s right to live.all the rspb staff that draw wages are because of donations not through leasing land that cant be farmed.gamekeepers need wages and jobs just like everyone else and do a dam site more work for their money than anyone else. Its ok skating them but you are taking away their livelihood and future by banning everything you dont like. United utilities has now stopped grouse shooting on its land due to public persuasion influenced by anti shooting orgs.the hen harriers that nest on keeperd moors will leave with the gamekeepers as they wont have their protection. Why does the rspb reserves not have any? They should be as they have loads of land.this is the death knell of rare birds of prey.good by merlin hen harriers peregrines etc.
Make a living by shooting?! Shooting what? Gamekeepers on estates are responsible for countless raptor deaths. On one royal estate an owl got caught in a Larsen trap and died. Many estates have stink pits where the corpses of dead foxes, raptors and other wildlife were killed and dumped all to protect the disgusting and barbaric shooting parties of people who enjoy taking the life of sentient beings for fun. These people don’t have the intelligence or compassion to take up cerebral interests.
So in your world, Skylark, gamekeepers protect hen harriers, maybe a few of many hundreds do, definitely not the majority. How do you explain the video evidence of someone on a moor ,with a decoy owl, blasting the life out of a hen harrier with a shotgun.
What happened to that video evidence? Was it shown to the police? A few years ago Prince Harry and a pal of his [Ed: rest of comment deleted as libellous]
Pack of lies.
If you wanted to devise a bird ‘flu incubator to distribute the disease as effectively as possible across the countryside it would be hard to come up with anything more effective than this. It beggars belief that this is allowed to carry on.
They don,t half fancy themselvep,s!
And don,t know if any one else has noticed, all the ducks in the photograph published above, appear to be females!
Just saying.
The birds pictured are juveniles, which are superficially similar to adult females. ;)
“all the ducks in the photograph published above, appear to be females!”
They are still juveniles, therefore the males haven’t yet developed their distinctive green heads. It’s not hard to pick out some that are very likely males in the second photo. What was your concern anyway?
Thank you for updating me. I believe PW is patron of Flora & Fauna. No wonder when I complained to the BTO their flip reply claimed it’s “management”.
I retorted that the human race needs to be “managed”
I’m not a townie lived on the north Yorkshire Moors for 25 yrs ban all shooting except for clays or target.
This small minded abhorrent entitled wealthy minority of people above the law and welfare of animals need to be stopped,sad thing is it’s someone partner, children , how do you live with someone like this ? Or live with yourself a brick swinging in their chest , do they actually have this thing called a heart or that other thing called a conscience. Obviously not .
Absolutely disgusting.