BY GARY BAXTER
As I sit in a hotel at Dartford near that poxy bridge watching traffic and more bloody rain falling I decide to have a look at social whatever they call it this week to find EVERY 6 ARTICLES that money grabbing lot the RSPB are busy rattling their tin for funds. This time with pictures of English Partridge and more claims our birds are in decline due to whatever reason they can conjure.
I often wonder why I read that twaddle. It does me no good.
My mind slips back to when I was helping the beam of happiness my father sort his English Partridge out for laying birds. I would of been 6 maybe 7 years old at the time.
In the 1970s and 80s Northamptonshire had real gamekeepers round every corner not what I see now. The real ones are few and far between. These men knew how to look after partridge – good wild coveys not these reared chickens that would sooner run than fly.
In those years you hardly ever saw signs of that stripy faced murderer or any big winged predators. I was in my teens when I saw my first buzzard.
Back then the wild birds thrived and they had plenty of good hedges to hide up in and the only worries were stoats and rats and weasels. Not too many foxes about either. I remember Dad’s underkeeper walking into a meeting with local MFH with a fist full of brushes that caused much embarrassment and cries of not your side of the boundary, sir!
Do you all get my drift?
PEST CONTROL WAS CARRIED OUT.
Keepers then had legs. They walked their shoots and beats and never had a poxy quad or Polaris thingie. Trapping was carried out. Vermin control was paramount. It was done professionally and record books of what came from where were kept.
These organisations like the RSPB are so bloody short sighted they can’t seem to get it that all our ground nesting birds are suffering because of ignorance or just sheer stupidity – I can’t make my mind up which one. That crew can’t seem to get through their heads that to win this war to save our ground nesting and other bird species, their mess cannot continue. They fast need to remember Gamekeepers were the very first conservationists, they are NOT YOUR ENEMY and you could learn a bloody lot from them.
I wonder how many of those clowns ever heard of the Euston system?
It seems this RSPB led trapping campaign is sucking money up like a Dyson on steroids and from what I hear on more wasted staff than what’s actually needed. A schools officer ? So many PR jobs you’d think their financial requirement was a million pounds every 2 days! (No joke, apparently it is).
Yesterday I had a call from a very good countryman of the old school telling me he had seen a large bird near his farm barns croaking about so it now seems on top of flaming jackdaws, rooks, carrion crow and the occasional passing Jay we now have BLOODY RAVENS floating about to go with the kites, buzzards and passing sparrow hawk and goshawk.
Can this bloody predator fest get any better I ask myself? I DONT THINK SO. Maybe lob in a pterodactyl for good measure?
That horrible croaking bird of the devil along with the other corvids, the red kite and buzzard, will ensure our young hares that are just starting to appear will soon be DEAD. There will be even more pressure on our other species. AS FOR THE LAMBS AND DEER FAWNS when they come I don’t think much to their chances when they are born. I dare say as the Raven population grows, and it will round us, THOSE DIPSTICKS AT NE won’t give our farmers a licence to control these black demons. Do they think our sheep farmers haven’t got enough to put up with now?
*
Meanwhile I was speaking to my dear friend Matron this last week who has informed me of all sorts of unhappiness down South. It seems that shambolic shower of shite Thames Water could be first to call a HOSE PIPE BAN as they say they dare not pump into a reservoir as there’s too much sewage in the river! No shit Sherlock! How many more people will be flooded this year? I dread to even think.
Why is this happening? Is it something to do with the EU waterways directive by any chance? That piece of paper outlawed ALL dredging of rivers on the grounds of ecological DAMAGE and the water companies are pumping sewage in. Well, that’s just GREAT – bugger the fish and any other living creature in our rivers. Now I voted to exit that stain on humanity called the EU so on those grounds that we won can we get rid of the waterways bill, Sunak? Please clean our rivers up and try and stop this flooding and while you’re at it stop building on flood plains – they are called that for a F×÷King reason, mate!
She did tell me that at Henley last year the competitors were saying the sewage was going downstream faster than they were! Surprising really, they must have lived in fear of falling in or being beaten over the line by a torpedo! Worst case of floaters’ revenge since Avery suffered that dodgy curry (allegedly, of course) down at the Mughal Dynasty in Wellingborough!
And I shall say the only thing that’s gone right for us this week was the fantastic job the boys to the West did turning out in Cardiff in their tractors though you seem to have annoyed the narcissist in platform shoes who will not be named. He’s now calling for the arrest of any farmer who protests! Just Stop Oil? HYPOCRISY not a word in the muppet’s vocabulary it seems. Well listen up I hate to break it to you but you need farmers 3 times a day and occasionally in-between no bloody matter who you are! Vegans kill so many animals they do not know about, they have blood on their hands too.
*
Sitting here at work in the small hours after a day in the big smoke you start thinking yes that’s a dangerous game the RSPB are playing. But I reckon at the speed the predators are taking over the natural balance, we will be completely buggered within my lifetime. The RSPB want to save these species, they keep rattling the tin but NOTHING gets any further forward! So, where the hell is the money going? We all know their finances are not good, especially not their pension pot.
None of their projects really get anywhere so what is the game they are playing with other people’s money ?
Is it the same game that the harrier project is playing on Dartmoor? The aviaries for that I have been told are £300,000. If that’s true then it’s crazy. What will happen to those birds when released I wonder? Targets for passing peregrine or will they just end up as fox fodder? Whatever it is, you can guarantee gamekeepers will get the blame!
Do these idiots not remember the time taken in fox and other predator control on Salisbury Plain before the bustard were released? I DOUBT IT !! I do know one thing between the RSPB and our water authorities, the natural ecology in our countryside is in DANGER from the millennial uni brigade in their posh anoraks and I don’t like it one bit.
It has proven over the last few years to me and a few others that the powers that be have given bugger all thought to their plans and I am just waiting to see what happens on the south downs if and when certain parties get permission to release golden eagles on the Isle of Wight! No doubt they’ll be swooping on some old tigers that got rescued by that old zoo down there from a sanctuary that had rescued them too.
There is of course one damn sure thing our eco warrior friends won’t give a bugger when it all goes bang and everything has gone completely tits up, and you can bet your last quid they will still blame the original conservationists, THE GAMEKEEPERS. Us living martyrs of the Countryside.
I just hope these total imbeciles can sleep at night.
No, I am not angry. The more I think about it the more fucking furious I GET!
*
And on top of all this I have heard some connard who thinks it’s a good idea to release BEAVER on the river. Well, ain’t you a clever bugger! Not if they get out of their smart little pen you’re putting them in. How long will it be before there’s dams and bloody great trees across a navigation channel? Yes, BOATS, not just 1 or 2 but dozens of them, up and down ALL SUMMER. Good God are there some clever folks about. Not only is our river clogged up with weeds, it needs dredging and now you want to block it good and proper with bloody beavers’ dams?
Just look at what’s happening. We have had floods like never before. You build on any part of our meadows you can. You drain entire industrial sites into our brook that in turn runs into the river. LOOK AT the other release sites over England and Scotland. North of the border the Salmon can’t get up the rivers to spawn because of these flat tailed tree chewers! Next thing it will be plant trees and shrubs to feed the beaver – bugger your Co2 capture.
The world has gone mad.
The lunatics are running the asylum.
Pass me the Scotch.
Gary Baxter is the son of a gamekeeper, is an ex gamekeeper and has run his own falconry based bird control business for the last 20 years.