Press release from Scottish SPCA (7th March 2023):
Penicuik man receives ban from keeping animals for five years after trapping and killing magpies
Alexander Hamilton was sentenced to a five-year ban from owning and keeping animals and 100 hours of community service at Edinburgh Sheriff Court on Tuesday, 5 March.
64-year-old Hamilton of Windsor Drive, Penicuik pled guilty to trapping magpies in illegal traps in his garden causing them distress. The birds were also deprived of adequate food water and shelter.
Scottish SPCA Chief Inspector Mark Rafferty, Special Investigation Unit, said:
“On 29 July 2022 our animal helpline received a call from a resident in Windsor Drive, Penicuik reporting two magpies caught in cages in the back garden of a neighbour.
We attended that same day but found no one at home. On looking over the fence into the back garden, we observed a Larsen Mate trap and two other cages. The two cages had no suitable shelter, food or water and no visible tag attached to them.
We attended later that day at the address and the occupier, Hamilton, let us into his garden. We found a dead magpie lying on the paving slabs in the back garden, just inside the gate.
In the bottom corner of the garden, screened off from the rest of the garden by a large unsecured fencing panel, was an area where there were three traps.
The first trap was a Larsen Mate trap containing one Magpie. The bird was in a distressed state due to being confined within the trap and was in poor condition. This trap was of a manufactured type, and was specifically designed for the purpose of catching targeted species.
Crow cage traps and Larsen traps are bird traps used to catch various territorial members of the crow family most commonly used by gamekeepers or sheep farmers.
Trap operators are responsible for traps carrying their Trap Registration Number and all traps used must only display a single tag or sign showing one NatureScot Trap Registration Number. These conditions were not being adhered to rendering this trap illegal.
The second trap contained one magpie and there was also a cage containing a magpie in poor body condition.
The magpie within this cage was distressed and managed to squeeze through the mesh on the floor of the cage and enter a space underneath the adjacent shed. The bird could be heard scraping and pecking at the wooden floor of the shed and was clearly distressed.
The birds were released from the cages and the traps and were released back into the wild.
We’re pleased with the five-year ban at the sentencing result. All animals should be protected from suffering and this includes magpies. Our team treat these cases seriously and it is good to see that the courts share this view. We will continue to investigate this type of offending, to ensure people like Hamilton are caught and stopped from further cruelty acts. I would like to thank the Procurator Fiscal Karon Rollo and the Wildlife and Environmental Crime Unit.
If anyone is concerned about an animal, they can contact our confidential animal helpline on 03000 999 999.”
ENDS
This is a good conviction for the Scottish SPCA, who reported Hamilton to the Crown Office using their powers under the Animal Health & Welfare (Scotland) Act 2006 and without needing support from Police Scotland (contrary to MSP Edward Mountain’s ludicrous claims that the SSPCA lacks the qualifications and training to implement the law).
There looks to have been some plea bargaining on the sentencing. According to this article in Edinburgh Evening News, Hamilton’s defence lawyer told the court that Hamilton owned two gundogs and asked for any animal ban imposed by the court to exclude those animals.
Sheriff Gillian Sharp obliged by sentencing Hamilton to carry out 100 hours of unpaid work in the community and disqualified him from owning or keeping animals, with the exemption of his two dogs, for five years.
Hamilton is reportedly no longer a gamekeeper and is now employed as a labourer. His conviction means he can no longer operate under the terms of a General Licence until the conviction is considered spent.
Raptor Persecution UK 
Well done to the SSPCA on this one!
But still a lenient sentencing when considering that the traps were illegal and that birds were suffering / in distress. 100 hours communtity service for this, nearly as much as for trading in stolen peregrines. The sentencing in Scotland / UK just doesn’t make any sense, and never has done.
I don’t find it strange that the SSPCA manages to obtain convictions.
I am concerned that, in my opinion, the sentence was not a term of imprisonment. I do hope that the courts will eventually realise that the Scottish Parliament does intend that such crimes should have a custodial period unless there are mitigating circumstances.
……causing any animal (….or bird)….any suffering…is not how someone should be behaving if they work in ‘conservation’…gamekeeping! This guy got off lightly…..but at least he got punished…..but custodial sentences really do need to be start being used!!
“Hamilton is reportedly no longer a gamekeeper and is now employed as a labourer.”
Really?
when are these magistrates going send these despicable people to prison? The sentences that are being given are no deterrence
The ‘a few rotten apples’ claim from the shooting lobby is looking as threadbare as the seat of an ancient pair of tweed plus fours – even part-time and retired gamekeepers are at it! Let’s not forget, corvids are treated just like this, only in traps made legal by the application of the appropriate label, as any of us that spend time in shooting country can attest.
I have reported similar in England to the RSPCA who referred me to the wildlife sector of the Police . Absolutely nothing was done to either alleviate the obvious suffering nor to even investigate . I was thoroughly disgusted with this inaction and to discover that these hideous traps are legal . I know that there are supposed to be regulated but on farmland and in distant copses for instance , who even sees them ?
This above is great news , long long way to go but it’s a start
Why did he have to keep his hunting dogs? He wouldnt need them for “labouring”? Maybe his hobby involved killing things recreationally…but why would his “killing for fun dogs” be exempted from his animal cruelty ban?
Regards keeping his two dogs. I would like to think the SSPCA were asked by the Sheriff to advise on this. If they were part “house dogs” and part working gundogs they may have been well looked after much loved family pets as well. Or they may of course have been kenneled up in that shit tip of a yard, I don’t know. The SSPCA have been nothing but professional in all the cases I have read about, showing up Ross Ewing’s (SLA) repeated bleating about “vexatious” activities as pure BS and scaremongering. So I hope they were asked their opinion and listened too about the dogs. All of that aside, he should have at least got a fine IMO – the idea that some birds are “bad” and can be treated as “shite” “trash” or “rubbish” (to borrow the keepers parlance) needs to be dealt with firmly if it is to be deterred.
well done SSPCA and all involved this wickedness and cruelty is everywhere we have those traps where I live. Xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx. I reported them to relevant organisations and keep my eye out. I’m going to bonny Scotland for my birthday soon got a day out watching sea wildlife,sea eagles the nicer side it’s all the underground underhanded scurge that spoil it .
It is a shame that the sentence was so lenient but in Scotland the prisons are very full and they seem to find any excuse not to lock people up. I have noticed that the perpetrators of some serious crimes are not imprisoned. I fear it won’t be long before the majority of criminals are, in effect, let off a suitable sentence.
“I fear it won’t be long before the majority of criminals are, in effect, let off a suitable sentence.”
What are you going to do about it?
A very harsh sentence for what was a minor, technical offence of not having a numbered tag on the trap.
You forgot to mention his failure to provide adequate food, water and shelter.
I can see food and shelter and water bowls in the photo with this article.
What you can see in one cage is a bowl (not clear whether it contains either food or water), an upturned bowl in another cage (which is only partially visible) and no bowl in the third cage (the clam trap). The key word here, in terms of the food, water and shelter is ‘adequate’.
The SSPCA press release, written by the actual investigators who attended the scene, says:
“The birds were also deprived of adequate food water and shelter”.
SSPCA are not exactly without bias though. There is shelter, there is an obvious open topped container of food between the two cages, which I would suspect is reachable by the captive birds through the mesh of their cages, difficult to tell from the photo. But if not who is not to say food is not regularly transferred from the receptacle to the caged birds? If they are not fed, they die, quickly, likewise with water, if they do not have any, they die.
as for the Larsen mate, well it is a trap not a holding cage, once caught the bird is dispatched when the trap is checked, and being in a garden, I would think that would be quite regularly.
I think the chap has been very badly let down by his defence.
The contortions you’re pulling to justify this gamekeeper’s offences are very telling.
He pleaded guilty to causing unnecessary suffering to those magpies. That is not ‘a minor, technical offence’.
How anyone can look at the squalor in that photo and think it’s a suitable or appropriate environment to keep an animal beggars belief.
“SSPCA are not exactly without bias though.”
Yes, they are.