THE spectacular merlin, Europe’s smallest falcon, is in trouble, along with 69 other birds on the British Trust for Ornithology’s red list of “birds of conservation concern”.
From the 1950s, and for about 30 years afterwards, they were badly affected by organochlorine pesticides, with numbers having fallen by 1960 to an all-time low of about 550 pairs. It took till the early 1980s for the population to show signs of recovery.
Even now, according to the RSPB, merlins remain the UK’s most heavily-contaminated raptor, despite a big reduction in pesticide use over the last 35 years.
So the suspected deaths of five merlin chicks high in a mid Wales valley this summer is particularly regrettable. It may may also be disquieting, because this small tragedy appears to have happened after a merlin nest was disturbed by people who had taken the decision to ring the chicks.
In late spring 2022, a Ceredigion birdwatcher had spotted a female merlin disappearing beneath a clump of dead heather in a hollow at the head of a valley, and had wondered if it was the site of a nest. Returning in mid-June, he discovered that it was. Later, he and another birdwatcher and a licensed bird-ringer returned, and metal rings were clipped onto the chicks’ legs.
Yet another birdwatcher visited the merlins’ cwm at the end of June and, after keeping watch for seven hours, concluded the nest had failed. It’s thought that disturbance at the nest during the ringing process could have been to blame.
Vast numbers of birds – up to about a million – are ringed in Britain each year. As in other places, the practice is very popular in Wales, with people keen to get involved as a hobby or, as they see it, to help to gather information useful for conservation.
But the activity is controversial. Birds are trapped in nets, measured, put in bags to be weighed, close-fitting identity tags secured to their legs. In the process, they may be injured or may die – ringers insist there are very few casualties in either category. It is claimed – with all seriousness – that the birds don’t mind. This is hogwash. No-one can possibly know how a bird subjected to such treatment feels about it; whether, or how, or how much, it suffers. If bird-ringers want to feel in the clear about what they do, that’s fine. But they shouldn’t necessarily expect such a claim to be taken seriously.
I’m willing to believe that limited ringing may sometimes be justified on the ground that it provides baseline information about such things as habitat requirements, longevity, mortality rates and migration, especially perhaps as prerequisites for conservation-funding.
However, the current scale of ringing looks certainly unjustified. Equally, ringing basically as a hobby, as a route to cuddly encounters with fascinating creatures, is entirely out of order. Fundamentally, birds have a clear right to be wild, to be utterly free, a right not to be caught in nets and perhaps, inadvertently, killed or injured, a right not have someone attach alien tags to their legs.
Bronterre News 