And so it begins

Looks like a song thrush egg.
Early Blackbird and thrush nests have very high failure rates due to predation because there’s very little cover about.
They’ll try again when the odds are better.
 
Just nature doing its thing, somethings are prey and some things are predators. The sooner we leave nature to do what it has been doing for very much longer then our species has been playing god, the better.
Good evening Mr Packham. I read plenty of rubbish on here on a daily basis but that is up near the top. Man has changed the landscape beyond all recognition. Leave nature to do it's own thing now will be to consign many, many species to history!
 
Just nature doing its thing, somethings are prey and some things are predators. The sooner we leave nature to do what it has been doing for very much longer then our species has been playing god, the better.

Sorry buddy - but you have no idea

Just nature doing its thing, somethings are prey and some things are predators. The sooner we leave nature to do what it has been doing for very much longer then our species has been playing god, the better.

When i was a lad a flock of crows were rooks
Crows were pairs with large areas - now many of the flocks are actually crows - you can watch scouring the fields together looking for ground nesters
They survive and indeed thrive on mans waste and wastefulness

We should all post this on NRW and RSPB pages

Done on Insta
Write to your MP too
 
Maybe there are more magpies because humans killed a lot of the other birds of prey?!

As uncomfortable as it might be to some, nature will restore a balance if left alone. That balance might not be what we would like and some species would die out. 98% of species that have ever lived on earth are extinct.

I agree with reducing or removing invasive species where practical as that is another example of humans interfering with a ecosystem that is far too complex for us to understand.

I’m on this forum because I want to ethically reduce the number of deer to a population that is sustainable with the wider ecosystem. If i can feed my family and friends with the byproducts then that is a bonus. Im sorry to say it but if humans hadn’t killed off every apex predator and learned to live along side them, then the deer numbers would have been kept in better check.

I see the fear mongers come out every time wolves are mentioned, I have spend months in the wilderness in multiple countries with large wolf populations and have never been concerned or even heard of people having a dangerous encounter. I have seen several wolves in the wild and each time, they give a long stare and then run off.

I would question what the real motive for people who feel the need to shoot anything that preys on something else.

I know this will fall 99% fall on deaf ears, but hearing an alternate perspective is not a bad thing and forums like this can easily become echo chambers of a single view.

Just my thoughts 👍
 
Maybe there are more magpies because humans killed a lot of the other birds of prey?!

As uncomfortable as it might be to some, nature will restore a balance if left alone. That balance might not be what we would like and some species would die out. 98% of species that have ever lived on earth are extinct.

I agree with reducing or removing invasive species where practical as that is another example of humans interfering with a ecosystem that is far too complex for us to understand.

I’m on this forum because I want to ethically reduce the number of deer to a population that is sustainable with the wider ecosystem. If i can feed my family and friends with the byproducts then that is a bonus. Im sorry to say it but if humans hadn’t killed off every apex predator and learned to live along side them, then the deer numbers would have been kept in better check.

I see the fear mongers come out every time wolves are mentioned, I have spend months in the wilderness in multiple countries with large wolf populations and have never been concerned or even heard of people having a dangerous encounter. I have seen several wolves in the wild and each time, they give a long stare and then run off.

I would question what the real motive for people who feel the need to shoot anything that preys on something else.

I know this will fall 99% fall on deaf ears, but hearing an alternate perspective is not a bad thing and forums like this can easily become echo chambers of a single view.

Just my thoughts 👍
I agree with some of what you say. However, now we have the issue. Do we simply stand by and watch these corvids decimate song bird populations while the "other birds of prey" build their numbers to do it naturally?
 
Maybe there are more magpies because humans killed a lot of the other birds of prey?!

As uncomfortable as it might be to some, nature will restore a balance if left alone. That balance might not be what we would like and some species would die out. 98% of species that have ever lived on earth are extinct.

I agree with reducing or removing invasive species where practical as that is another example of humans interfering with a ecosystem that is far too complex for us to understand.

I’m on this forum because I want to ethically reduce the number of deer to a population that is sustainable with the wider ecosystem. If i can feed my family and friends with the byproducts then that is a bonus. Im sorry to say it but if humans hadn’t killed off every apex predator and learned to live along side them, then the deer numbers would have been kept in better check.

I see the fear mongers come out every time wolves are mentioned, I have spend months in the wilderness in multiple countries with large wolf populations and have never been concerned or even heard of people having a dangerous encounter. I have seen several wolves in the wild and each time, they give a long stare and then run off.

I would question what the real motive for people who feel the need to shoot anything that preys on something else.

I know this will fall 99% fall on deaf ears, but hearing an alternate perspective is not a bad thing and forums like this can easily become echo chambers of a single view.

Just my thoughts 👍
There were 10 buzzards circling over my village the other day. That seems very high to me, and there are no shortage of other birds of prey locally either. Yet the fields are covered in corvids of all varieties, so I’m not seeing the correlation you describe.

What I have seen on multiple occasions is corvids attacking birds of prey, and winning. I can’t imagine corvids are top of the list of prey for BOP, or indeed on that list anywhere.

Nature, I'm afraid, will never balance while you have over 60 million people and their associated farming, building, and waste present.

Wholeheartedly agree with you that we should politely discuss different opinions though, a forgotten concept in modern times it seems.
 
Maybe there are more magpies because humans killed a lot of the other birds of prey?!

As uncomfortable as it might be to some, nature will restore a balance if left alone. That balance might not be what we would like and some species would die out. 98% of species that have ever lived on earth are extinct.

I agree with reducing or removing invasive species where practical as that is another example of humans interfering with a ecosystem that is far too complex for us to understand.

I’m on this forum because I want to ethically reduce the number of deer to a population that is sustainable with the wider ecosystem. If i can feed my family and friends with the byproducts then that is a bonus. Im sorry to say it but if humans hadn’t killed off every apex predator and learned to live along side them, then the deer numbers would have been kept in better check.

I see the fear mongers come out every time wolves are mentioned, I have spend months in the wilderness in multiple countries with large wolf populations and have never been concerned or even heard of people having a dangerous encounter. I have seen several wolves in the wild and each time, they give a long stare and then run off.

I would question what the real motive for people who feel the need to shoot anything that preys on something else.

I know this will fall 99% fall on deaf ears, but hearing an alternate perspective is not a bad thing and forums like this can easily become echo chambers of a single view.

Just my thoughts 👍

Respectfully a bit different to having wolves / lynx / bears running around Kielder !
You shooting a few deer for your freezer and friends has no bearing on the population at all

Jave you seen a fox hunt ground nesting birds ? Numbers totally out of proportion because of the urban populations
 
A lot of the opposing views come from an unconscious bias that ‘song birds’ should be protected, maybe because we like hearing their song…I know I do. It’s also very easy to anthropomorphise the cute black bird and the evil magpie. But the laws of nature dictate that the strongest and most adaptable survive, what if that’s the Corvids? We might not like it but who are we to impose our will?
The corvids will create a vacuum in the trophic pyramid and some other species will exploit the gap and the ever-flexing cycle will continue, long, long after our species has gone.
 
A lot of the opposing views come from an unconscious bias that ‘song birds’ should be protected, maybe because we like hearing their song…I know I do. It’s also very easy to anthropomorphise the cute black bird and the evil magpie. But the laws of nature dictate that the strongest and most adaptable survive, what if that’s the Corvids? We might not like it but who are we to impose our will?
The corvids will create a vacuum in the trophic pyramid and some other species will exploit the gap and the ever-flexing cycle will continue, long, long after our species has gone.

Do you not understand that we are part of the balance and we have tipped the scales too far one way ?
The birds we are protecting are already under such pressures through development / modern farming / disturbance - more predators are the last thing they need and something MOST of us do something about
 
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