Yet another illegally persecuted raptor in North Yorkshire, the raptor-killing capital of the UK.
This kestrel was picked up on Christmas Day with shotgun injuries to its wing.
The bird was found close to Amotherby crossroads on Amotherby Lane, Malton, North Yorkshire. An x-ray by Mark Naguib of Battle Flatts Veterinary Clinic revealed the extent of its injuries and the bird is now in the care of the wonderful Jean Thorpe of Ryedale Wildlife Rehabilitation. (Please, consider making a donation HERE to help Jean’s outstanding voluntary work).
If you were in the area and heard a shot on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, please contact police wildlife crime officer PC Jez Walmsley at Malton Police Station on 101.
Raptor Persecution UK 
We need to tighten up on gun ownership. Too many armed idiots out there!
Wouldn’t it be good if the police had issued this appeal for info – raptor persecution being a wildlife crime priority!
They will, in July. That is if previous form from the peelers is anything to go by. They daren’t issue a plea on wildlife crime until all chance of memory or recoverable evidence is utterly gone. Otherwise they might have to do something, and by something I of course do not mean actively cover it up as opposed to a passive cover up; no not at all. I’m sure their something would not be that, right?
Making comments like that is fine and we all can have a voice. Heaping work on our Police is not fine especially when Parliament has the first call. Remember budget cuts? There is not enough of them and there will be good people out there who don’t deserve unnecessary criticism. Wildlife crime needs all,of us to pull and keep together.
Surely landowners are entitled to protect their vole and insect populations…..!
This gives a good insight into the mindset of these people. What possible harm could a kestrel do to anyone.
Mistook it for a hen pheasant ?
Everything with hooked beak and talon, no matter how small. How are the merlin and hobby populations getting on, btw?
So it continues with no sign of anything being done about it, a pretty shabby police force we have in this country,’jobs for the boy’s!
On the contrary, Chris – North Yorkshire Police have recently set up a specialist rural police taskforce to deal specifically with wildlife crime and from what we’ve seen/heard, they’re off to a very good start. Give them a chance.
As you pointed out about the gamekeepers on the articles from the Scottish Government’s Hen Harrier Champion, they’ve had a chance for forty odd years. They are all out of chances. Unless they start racking up convictions, and convictions of the betweeded purdey carrying sorts at the top too, then the cops will have to learn to live with being held in public contempt.
Sometimes you dont need to wonder what motive some people have for shooting something. Some of those with guns, dont have them for any culling, official ‘sport’ protection; they are kept to destroy life, for fun, to show off, to prove they can…whatever other inexplicable reason. It would take a better mind reader/psychiatrist than me to figure out why, but sometimes its’s just boredom. Something moving to shoot at. There probably was a time when it was other races of people, and legal. Now thats ilegal, its anything else that moves and wont bite back.
I remember going to South Africa back in the Apartheid days and met someone, whose big ambition in life, ‘cos he owned a gun…legally, was for a ‘black african’ to break into his house so he could shoot him.
Some people just want to kill…anything.Ans sometimes anyone as long as they can justify it…and in those days it wasnt difficult. There will always be a few like this. Its the others one needs to educate…these you just need to lock up.
Rant over…for now.
In one of the last pieces he wrote before his untimely death in 1973, Kenneth Allsop said of the Peregrine:
‘We poison them, we shoot them, we steal their eggs and young. It is so wrong. We are the predators and
the killers, not those peregrines. For they and the few of their kind which survive live exalted lives, true to
their nature, and we degrade and damage their world which is so beautiful and complex and balanced.’
How poignant these words remain today – and not just in relation to Peregrines!
His book ‘Adventure Lit Their Star’ is a classic amongst wildlife literature.
It takes a special type of scumbag to shoot such a wonderfull creature
It does, and it appears that North Yorkshire is riddled with them. The new NY Police RTF is getting to grips with some of them. Let’s hope that, as time goes on, their intelligence gathering will lead them to the cowards who are committing wildlife offences with licensed firearms.
The whole firearms licensing situation needs reviewing. For a start, applicants should have to pay the full cost instead of being, in effect, subsidised by tax-payers because the financial shortfall has to be met from Police budgets.
Currently, all the odds appear to be stacked in the dark side’s favour – but things are going to change!
North Yorkshire – England’s challenge to the Angus Glens and Cairngorms N.P.