Summary of Attempt to Poison a Nesting pair of Peregrine Falcons in West Cumbria this year.
Location: Salterhall Quarry, Rowrah, Cumbria
The Circumstances were discovered by Geoff Horne, Peregrine Coordinator
Cumbria 14th April 2009
On the 6th March I visited Salterhall Quarry in West Cumbria, which has been used by a pair of Peregrines to successfully breed for a number of years. The purpose of this visit to the quarry was to establish if the territory was occupied by falcons this season, and also to try and locate any potential nesting site. Under normal circumstances, this particular pair of Peregrines would have laid a full clutch of eggs by the 14th April. On this visit I observed an adult female falcon at the site.
On the 2nd April a colleague of mine observed both adult falcons at the site. He observed the pair of falcons were already showing a keen interest in the old Raven nest situated on the side of the vertical quarry cliff face. On the afternoon of 14th April I revisited the site to see if the pair had now completed laying their eggs. On approaching the top of the quarry edge situated directly above the nesting ledge I found the carcass of a dead pigeon. On closer examination of the pigeon it was apparent its left wing flight feathers had been cropped and tail feathers pulled out. Most back and breast feathers were also missing and it was tethered to a brick with some stranded wire cable. The site was deserted and there were no signs of the Peregrines anywhere, a very ominous sign. On further inspection of the pigeon carcass I noticed the breast and back had been painted with a brown substance, possibly poison.
At this point I telephoned the police and a young policewoman from the Egremont police station came out to examine the situation. After carefully placing the corpse of the pigeon into a sealed bag the police officer took the carcass back to the station after assuring me the body would be sent to the appropriate laboratory for analysis.
On the 16th April I met with James Leonard RSPB Investigations Officer to examine the site and to recover any potential dead peregrines. During our site examination I was informed by Mr. Leonard that he had been advised by a West Cumbrian Police officer that because no dead Peregrine had been recovered from the quarry, the corpse (I regarded as important evidence) had already been disposed of at a local land fill site without any analysis being undertaken.
Interestingly, a similar situation was recorded in 1995 at a second Cumbrian quarry located just 3 miles from Salterhall. On this occasion an adult Peregrine was recovered dead along side the corpse of a pigeon which had been laced with Mevinphos a deadly poison. At the time the eyrie contained at least two chicks; both chicks also disappeared.After a careful and extensive police investigation no one was ever charged with any offence.
I must point out there is a long history of direct and extensive peregrine persecution along the West Cumbrain coast. Peregrine eggs are being removed from nesting sites along with a number of broods of young each season.
Geoff Horne
Peregrine Coordinator Cumbria
I’m a bit unsure as what to make of this?
Is the site where the pigeon was tethered readily accessable by joe public? If so and someone happened to find this “poisoned pigeon” how much danger would it put them in?
Without meaning to sound over zealous would the poison laced carcas be enough to kill a person say if they touched it and they then proceded without thinking to bite their finger nails or consume food with their hands before washing them?
I apologise for my ignorance but it seems pretty worrying to me. And I thought pigeon fanciers cared for there birds, if so why would they ever subject a bird to this to eliminate the peregrines?
Either way I would sleep a little bit more soundly in my bed at night if the police could put a stop to this kind of behaviour. Surely poisoned carcasses left strewn across the countryside needs directly addressing?
I would like to write to the appropriate governing body as regards this to find out what is being done about it. Can you help me out on this please?
We’ll never know for sure about the poison, since the police destroyed the evidence.
It’s quite probable that if the pigeon was baited with poison, whoever set the trap took away the carcases of the peregrines.
It is probably 30 years since I had any involvement in raptor protection, and I had foolishly thought that conservation bodies had successfully moved Societies’ thinking onward. Reading the above it seems we are still mired in the unsavoury behaviour of shooting birds for’pleasure’, and destroying anything that we feel may influence our ‘sport’.Has education taught us nothing!
And what is possibly worse, the police appear, if not complicit, at least disinterested. Come on people; we consider ourselves civilized: let’s prove it.
This is blatant law breaking and the Police appear to have done nothing to investigate and then proceeded to destroy the evidence! Why?
Presumably the Falcons are now nowhere to be seen? and the nest is deserted?
Incidents like these need to be brought to the Public’s attention and this excellent site is helping in this, but what is the RSPB doing? A small campaign on their site about BOP is not enough.
In reply to Joe Bloggs, the quarry is gated and has signs saying “Danger keep out” but it is regularly used by dog walkers and teenage boys looking for something to do.
Depending on which type of poison was being used, and we don’t know that yet,the potential is for a human being or his dog to at least be made very ill or even killed by poison is very high.
It is a criminal offence to lay out any type of poison in the open and something the local Police should take very seriously.
with peregrines and most other raptors now being relativly common the amount of time and effort required by the police to investigate these crimes will just not be justified. what we need is a change in attitude, as long as game preserving/shooting continues there will be illegall persecution of all raptors, we have to accept this as a fact. unfortunatly the rspb amongst many others are primerilly protectionists not conservationists. so any sensable proactive measures will be denied, as long as shooting is a legal field sport people will destroy raptors, so we must accept this as unsavioury as it is that this is part of game shooting. but there are plenty of things that could be done to ease the problem to the satisfaction of many, though not the RSPB Reward schemes for keepers for a rerds like hen harriers, licensed wild take for falconers of sucessfull species like goshawks and peregrines. but most of all i believe reduced persecution by over zealous “protectionists” ie bto ringers and other unbelevably “licensed” people permitted to disturb.
I appreciate before this comment you said there needs to be a change in attitude, but and i quote, “as long as game preserving/shooting continues there will be illegall persecution of all raptors, we have to accept this as a fact”
We DO NOT and SHOULD NOT accept this as fact end of.
Night follows day, FACT.
Water runs down Hills, FACT.
Raptor persecution, of schedule 1 species FACT.
However we DO NOT and i certainly WILL NOT accept this. It is an illegal offence, punishable by a custodial sentence. The perpetrators are nothing else other than criminals. FACT!
We SHOULD not accept this as “a part of game shooting”. As the famous cheif scientist, Derek Almey Ratcliffe once said, if shooting estates do not want to play the game then they can stop shooting all together on Red Grouse Moors. He even said that game keepers could be made into wildlife wardens without the guns!
Here here, why should the future of these magnifecnt birds be placed in jepordy by the so called “sporting fraternity”? I personally have nothing against game shooting, but in their mission to seek ‘pleasure’ from shooting if a minority are unable to keep within the law, then shooting game must be controlled by licence; a proposal recently put forward by the RSPB. If i rob my local supetstore every week instead of paying for the goods i take, what do you think will happen to me? I would be arrested and more than likely banished from every single store that chain holds. Yet game keepers can quite happily go about their normal estate duties, which includes the persecution of protected birds of prey and still keep their job, their house together their income. It strikes me that being a gamekeper in the UK is the only kind of accepted employment where the emplyee regularly breaks the law to carry out the work he undertakes. It is simply not right. I am confident I could make a few quid from smuggling illegal substances into the country but i don’t because it is morally wrong and illegal. Just like purposeful persecution of these protected birds is morally wrong and illegal.
Barbaryboy i’m beginning to question your intelligence with that last comment? “Successful species like GOSHAWK”? I fail to see how this is a successful species? It is if you take a look at its plateau now as appposed to its state of extinction in years passed. However, despite their secertive nature Goshawks are hardly popping up out of every copse, wood and forest throughout the country are they!!! Next you will be condoning wild take of european eagle owls or Hen harrier despite their critical numbers???
All your comments just seem to signify that you do not support the protection of these birds? I can’t understand as to why? If you can prove me wrong I will eat humble pie but i for one do not believe the folks putting this website together and other licensed volunteers are persecutors. Yes i am sure they do disturb the birds in their research work, afterall that is the reason they are licensed. However without their findings and without their hard unpaid volunteer work they undertake, the state of wild raptors in England would be a very different storey I am sure. Lets face it, these guys were not just handed licenses on a plate, because if a licence was that easy to obtain every Tom Dick or Harry would have one. I’m confident the volunteers know what they are doing and i feel very pleased there are dedicated people out their willing to sacrifice their time in the continued conservation and protection work of raptors. Hopefully thanks to them my children’s children will still be able to watch and enjoy birds like the peregrine falcon or the hen harrier in future generations still to come!
i totally support the full protection of all birds of prey. but i am living in the real world and understand the huge conflict of interests that surround birds of prey today in the uk.show me a person involved in game preservation and ill show you a persecuter of bop. some arnt to bad but most are. of course they will all say to the authorities that they dont do it! but they do, all of them. as far as goshawks not popping up out of every copse no there not . but there are far far more of them about than people realise because they are so secretive, and the fact that some studies class them as an upland species so dont look for them in lowland rural areas, they are quite numerous in my lowland semi rural area, but the local study groups arnt really interested. trust me goshawks are around in large numbers and doing extremely well, all thanks to falconers who have no access to the quite obvious harvestable surplus of young now available. but the keepers have! and do “harvest” them in substantial numbers every year. what a shame we cant all work together ?
having had a great interest of raptors for over 40 years i still find it very disturbing that some low life will go to such means to destroy perigrines breeding attempts.i live very close to a number of perigrine sites and one in particular in a working quarry seems to be used every year then about end of april may it all goes very quiet. are the eggs stolen i do not know,this seems to happen nearly every year if there was a local group to contact that you know of please contact me , maybe with a bit of help we could give a bit of a lift to the local population