The Benefits of Recession

One unanticipated side-effect of the recession here has been the virtual collapse of the commercial shoot that has been a bane of our lives for the last few years. Two or three times a week we were subjected to trailers of city folk, dolled up in pristine tweed, blasting birds out of the sky around the house. For our neurotic dog, it was like a perpetual Guy Fawke's Night.

This year even the obligatory Boxing Day convoy turned round and gave up as drizzle pelted down on the sodden fields. The once nightly 'lamping' activity, in which unlit 4x4s crept around the field edges, accompanied by the beam of red flood lamps and the crack of small bore rifles, also seems to be in abeyance.

We are often told that commercial shoots bring wider benefits to wildlife and the landscape, but these are hard to discern. The call of foxes in the woods was once a familiar sound at night. Since commercial shooting began foxes are no longer heard or seen, although the corpses of badgers appear from time to time, lying in fields where they fell, or slung over fences like refuse. Birds of prey are now rare too. Forlorn signs about lost dogs appear on gateposts for pets that have strayed off footpaths and not returned, and rumours of poisoned bait make owners wary. Conversely, the feed hoppers have brought a plague of rats.

Commercial shooting has meant changes to the landscape too. Rearing and release pens have appeared, together with feed hoppers made from day-glow blue plastic barrels. Rectangular stockades of straw bales and alien strips of maize are scattered across the downs like lego. Swathes of woodland have been cut down, whether to accommodate the birds or the guns isn't clear.

I suppose some jobs have been lost. I suppose I ought to mind.

I don't.

Ferret

The neighbour's boy just drove over to borrow some bread flour. As he walked up the path he saw a long furry thing on the lawn. It was a ferret. We watched it undulating exploratively round the garden, looking like a hairy U-bend.

I'm glad he saw it too, or I might have doubted my sobriety.

There was a stoat living under one of the sheds earlier this year, but this seemed a lot larger and a lot tamer. Judging by the tail colour, it may be a polecat crossbreed, which could help with the rats that are staking out the bird feeder, but won't please the gamekeeper much. I won't tell him; less birds means fewer fat men peppering the car with falling shot. The ermine could come in useful if they ever make me a lord, though.

Hope it doesn't eat the dog.

How to Get Rid of Sparrows

The shooters were out again on Wednesday. My study looks out across the field to the release pen in the wood, where the captive bred birds are introduced to 'the wild'. The Dutch banned the rearing of birds so that they can be shot down for pleasure in 2002, regarding it as morally and environmentally insupportable. I have sympathy with their view.

A couple of years ago I found a sparrowhawk which used to perch on a drainpipe at the end of the house lying dead on the ground, and I have little doubt it ate poisoned bait (as probably did the pet dogs and cats which regularly go missing in the woods).

In 2006 The Times drew attention to the fact that 'Shooting Times' had published a list of the countryside's 'most wanted pests' - a list which included eagles, ospreys, red kite, buzzards, falcons, harriers and goshawks, together with otters and badgers.

I was reminded of this by the report about paving and decking being responsible for the fall in urban sparrow populations. It's not a new suggestion. Authoritative studies have also shown the fall to be due to aggressive magpies, cats, disease, climate change, pollution, unleaded fuel and mobile phone masts. I'm not convinced of the paving and decking argument, because numbers have also fallen massively in rural areas. Our sparrows all but disappeared some time in the 1990s. They reached a clamorous peak one year, in which we could barely hear ourselves think for the clamour of them in the eaves, then the following year, Bam! Not a sparrow to be seen. It was so sudden that I can only put it down to disease or a bird of prey.

Anyway, while we mourn the endangered sparrow and are urged to remove our decking and put up nesting boxes, a host of commercial pest companies are offering to rid our gardens of the pesky sparrow. For example Safeguard, 'The Pest Control People for London and the South East', advise that there are several methods available for controlling sparrow populations including use of pesticides. Countrywide Falconry And Pest Control Services Ltd offer "humane, fast, effective removal' of sparrows across London and the South East of England. The Pest Control UK Directory regards all birds as a source of disease, and says that keeping birds away from your lawns and gardens is not 'anti-environment'. They suggest use of spikes, nets, holographic and iridescent foil, sonic and ultrasonic devices, and
elimination of food sources for wild birds, such as spreading methyl anthranilate on the lawn to make it taste bad. These are the sort of people who don't like trees because leaves make the patio untidy.

Yesterday there was a quail with a damaged leg huddling by the garage, presumably injured the day before. But don't feel sad; fresh batches of fee-paying urban 'sportsmen' waddle out of the shoot trailer twice a week, so perhaps it'll provide gratification for one of them today.

It's the Season to be Deadly

I hate killing wildlife, but sometimes there is no choice. Now that the cold weather has arrived we've put up the bird table, and a large rat hole appeared below it within days. I shot the first one yesterday, leaning out of an upstairs window. It's tricky as the window faces the lane and my reputation is probably bad enough without being considered a crazed gunman.

In the past few weeks we've trapped about a dozen mice. I also put down two rabbits which had myxomytosis. More heart-breakingly, I had to trap a mole which was wreaking havoc in the garden.

At least there was a reason for all of these, and the deeds quick and absolute. As I sat at my desk a few days ago the shoot was in action. I watched wounded pheasants tumble out of the sky, then leap and flutter, broken-winged on the ground, waiting for the dogs to arrive. One made it to the garden, and a ruddy-faced shooter asked to come in and get it. As he approached the bird managed to get airborne and escape into the nearby shaw so it was left there, presumably to die a slow and painful death.

I still don't understand what joy or entertainment there is in shooting birds. They should go off into the woods and shoot at each other. Now that would be sport.

Big Guns, Little Richards

The story this week about the duck that survived being shot and kept for two days in a fridge reminded me of Percy. Our late neighbour was an elderly widower who had no remaining family. He lived for his garden and the wildlife that frequented it, including a pheasant which became so domesticated that it would come into his kitchen and feed from his hand. When the guns were out, Percy simply lay low in the garden. As a result, he survived long past his expected life span - much to the frustration of the local gamekeeper.

When our neighbour died, we had little choice but to go on feeding Percy, who was by now too old to fend for himself. Until one day a convoy of four-by-fours formed a great horseshoe round the garden. Out of them clambered a lot of short, round men in shiny green gum boots and state-of-the-art mail-order country wear, all zippers and leather patches and unnecessary pockets. The sort of men who are taller on a bar stool than off it. Who have labradors named 'Bramble', and guns whose size is in inverse proportion to their...well, you get the idea. For the next few minutes all hell broke loose, as dogs crashed about in the neighbouring shaw, beaters whistled, shotguns banged, pellets rained down on the roof, and our own dog had a nervous breakdown under the sofa. Then the little fat men waddled the two or three feet back to their Range Rovers and drove away.

Of course that was the last we saw of Percy, although it was a consolation that he would have been completely inedible. I wonder sometimes about this noisy sport, which seems a tad lacking in the elements of courage and endurance that most decent sports possess. Although, satisfyingly, two local shooters were injured recently whilst 'lamping', when the truck they were sitting in set off too quickly, and they fell off the back.