Illegal shooting taking place in woodland - what to do about it.

[AHPP]

1 hour ago, Mark Bolam said:

Let’s face it, no one with an FAC is going to shoot an owl.

Even the most hardened under pressure gamekeeper probably wouldn’t, and certainly not in someone else’s random wood.

 

If it was shot it would be a random cretin with an air rifle.

 

I find that a stretch though.

 

Because of the way owls live, the chances of a sitting shot at one are pretty rare.

 

 

 

Told my mate about this thread earlier and then as chance would have it we poked our heads into a barn and found a barn owl! I woke it up and it rocketed out parting his hair when I said to look in. We'd both just been saying how you'd have to work pretty hard at shooting one but thinking about it now, night vision and thermal is so good and cheap these days that the gap is narrower.

[Oldfeller]

49 minutes ago, Scuttlefish said:

I found a dead sparrowhawk on my land which looked odd but it was soon apparent that it had hit a glass panel surrounding my neighbours decking - probably whilst chasing a small bird down. It had catapulted over the panel and landed up in my garden... There was a definite mark on the panel where it had hit it.

I had the very same thing happen to me twice, once with a sparrowhawk, that hit my french windows and was unconscious, I checked and as far as I could tell, no bones broken, I placed it it a quiet place and kept an eye on it, within 10-15 minutes it had regained consciousness and after a short time flew off strongly.

an almost identical occurrence but with a kingfisher and a different window, that to survived, it was dazed but not knocked out completely, my missus took a picture of it and did a cross stitch picture of it.

but the oddest one was a robin being pursued by a sparrohawk that flew inside  my open combat jacket and hid until the threat passed, the sparrowhawk veering off rapidly upon seeing me, I was driving the tractor at the time. I remember feeling it's heart beating at a rapid rate.

where I was working at the time you only had to pick up a spade and the local robin would follow you to where you started digging and were tame enough to take worms and grubs from your hand.