Let’s not stoop to persecution

Few birds have left a more lasting impression on me than the first buzzard I saw. It was dead, spreadeagled on its back with wings stretched out, its yellow legs broken. The body was sprawled in the courtyard of the Cornish farm where my family was staying for our summer holiday. It had been caught by a pole trap; the farmer killed it because he believed that buzzards preyed on his lambs. It was 1958: the Protection of Birds Act had been passed four years earlier. Aged eight, I was fascinated by the dead bird, so I came home and read all I could about buzzards.

I soon discovered they hadn’t bred in my home county of Kent since the end of the 18th century, so my chances of seeing a live one were not much better than encountering a penguin that the buzzard was “a vanishing species… with the increase in pheasant worship, the doom of the buzzard was sealed”.