Farmer Murph
Well-Known Member
I believe some gun clubs have taken to shooting them, and in some case poisoning them [anecdotal - can’t prove it], under the belief that they are killing full size cock pheasants.Rabbits eating into a crop of spring barley. All the Buzzards have disappeared from around within the last year, there was a lot of them there and they certainly were keeping the rabbits in check. Nobody seems to know what happened to them.
Now we have plenty of both here, and I have never seen the buzzards bother or attack a pheasant - even when crossing a freshly cut hay field. Of course that doesn’t mean they don’t, but I don’t believe they do given they have an abundance of rabbits to eat around these parts. And even if they do take the occasional pheasant, they are not the Buzzard’s main food source, and they certainly are not wiping pheasants out.
Like any organisation, gun clubs have both outstanding decent members and then some who are less so, and just want any reason to shoot things. In my experience it is usually the non-land owner types in gun clubs who have no affinity to nature and just want to shoot anything that moves, and would take any opportunity, true or not, to kill a large bird of prey such as a buzzard.
Not saying this is the case where you are Mid cork, but if the rabbits are still there, then you can be sure it is some sort of human interference that has caused the Buzzards to have disappeared.