Dead raptors. Natural, accidental or criminal cause of death?

I was interested in the most recent post on Raptor Persecution UK which centred around an article by the Southern Uplands Moorland Group (SUMG) and the finding of a dead barn owl. It seems that the bird probably died of starvation. The article goes on: Whist this is sad it is part of the natural world and simply reinforces the fact that a dead raptor is not automatically linked to the keepering profession

Two dead buzzards at the bottom of an electricity pole. Suspicious?

RPUK dealt with another issue raised in the SUMG article and went on to state that there are some decent, law-abiding gamekeepers who are as thrilled at seeing a raptor as I am. I’ve met them and have worked with them, so I know they exist. I agree entirely, though I have met more than my share of keepers and their employers who are the other end of the spectrum and who do their colleagues a huge disservice. In fairness this proportion of bad apples is diminishing, some of them retiring, some seeing the light and coming in to the 21^st century and some changing over to a much more modern employer.

Anyway, the real point of my writing this article is to expand on the issue that all raptors found dead should neither automatically be linked to game management nor may even have died as a result of a crime. The barn owl in the article is a good starting point, and one winter I picked up several dead barn owls at their roosting sites. The winter in question was probably one of the worst we had for a number of years and there was complete snow cover, in some places several feet deep. The barn owls were probably at their extreme northern range in Scotland and would possibly have struggled for food even in an open winter.

The transformer-type device on the pole leading off the electricity to go under the railway bridge. The buzzards had been electrocuted..

When I was with Tayside Police dozens of calls came to me every year about dead raptors, buzzards in particular. I would never have been done collecting them and submitting them for examination but I managed to screen many of them out as most likely having died of natural causes. The criteria used was:

• Is the bird in an area known as a hotspot for persecution
• Is there a dead bird or mammal nearby which may have been a bait
• Are the bird’s talons clenched
• Is its head arched over its back
• Are any injuries or is there any blood visible?
• Is it late autumn/winter/early spring when some birds succumb to starvation
• Does the bird appear to be thin
• Is the bird under or near overhead wires
• Is the bird near a public road
• Is the bird (in the case of sparrowhawks or sometimes peregrines) near a window

Depending on the answers to these questions a decision was made either to collect the bird as soon as possible or to disregard it as most likely being a natural or accidental death.

Immature peregrine hanging on fence. Suspicious?

Apart from the examples of barn owls, buzzards are regularly found having starved to death. They are also frequently found dead under electricity pole that have a transformer-type appliance to divert electricity off to a building or under a bridge. On one occasion two buzzards lay dead at the bottom of such a pole. Their presence would look extremely suspicious to most folks who encountered them but in fact they had died accidentally, as a result of electrocution. Other birds I’ve seen in such circumstances are kestrels and in two cases ospreys at the foot of  pole near a fish farm.

On one occasion a female peregrine was found dead in the High Street in Perth. Its death was also accidental. It had been chasing a pigeon and both it and the pigeon crashed into a shop window.

Young sparrowhawks also have frequent crashes into windows or even tree branches when pursuing small birds. In many cases these prove fatal or result in a broken wing, equally devastating for such a bird.

The most unusual suspicious death reported to me was that of a peregrine which had been found hanging on a fence. The death didn’t fulfil many of the criteria above but was most certainly worth a look. The bird turned out to be an immature peregrine with a wing tangled round the barbed wire which was the top strand of the fence. The estate that the bird was on was one where there had never been any problem with illegal activity so I went to see the keeper, who was an extremely pleasant and competent individual. He knew immediately what had happened. He had often seen young peregrines pursuing either grouse or partridges at low level. This was almost certainly what happened here, except that the prey had seen the fence and the peregrine hadn’t. The inexperienced peregrine had struck the barbed wire with a wing and had become impaled, quickly wrapping the wing further round the wire. It had been an inglorious end to a glorious bird.

The bird had most likely crashed into the fence while chasing prey.

Despite many dead raptors having succumbed to natural or accidental deaths most that are found should still be reported to a police wildlife crime officer, who can then apply the tests above and decide whether it may be the victim of a crime. The police will err on the side of caution.