Pheasant pluckers?
David “Flashman” Cameron (Eton and Brasenose College, Oxford) and the Demon Slasher of Downing Street Gideon “George” Osborne (St Pauls and Magdelen College, Oxford) would have us believe that we are in “this” together.
The “this” being referred to is a condition unknown to those two gentlemen, namely being broke, hard up, our jobs and houses under threat and generally in the financial poo, but there we go.
However, new and shocking evidence has emerged that the country is in fact being run for and by a cabal of like minded millionaires with only one thing on their mind; the control and managed shooting of the peasants. Sorry, pheasants.
News has broken that in these hard, cash strapped times DEFRA (Department of Food, Environment and Rural Affiars) has decided to lend a helping hand to the landed gentry by spending upwards of £400,000 to suppress a humble predator known as the Common Buzzard.
Note the word “common”. Significant? You tell me.
Apparently these “common” little things have been embarrassing the government by doing what the planes and helicopters so expensively and invariably cack handedly ordered by the government’s ultra billion pound defence procurement programme so often spectacularly fail to do, i.e. fly, and hitting their target of opportunity too. That being the hapless peasants. Sorry, pheasants.
The pheasants get the shitty end of the stick either way because if they make it though the dive bomber attacks from the odd Buzzard they get chased into the air where they receive extremely extensive and usually lethal “flak” from people called Charles and Henry and Giles dressed in tweeds and shooting extremely expensive guns rather well.
Pheasant pluckers indeed!
It is not much fun to be a peasant in the UK at the moment. Sorry, I meant pheasant. I keep getting them mixed up.
The naughty Buzzard Boys and Girls are clearly a matter of concern to those in the corridors of power, who feel that their weekend shooting parties and profitable shoots may be somewhat underwhelming if there and not quite as many peasants, sorry pheasants, left to mow down before retiring to the Spit Roast and Mouton Cadet back at the Range Rovers.
I understand that Flashman has been forced to backtrack on his previous “Hug a Buzzard” softly, softly approach. Instead, under plans drawn up by Home Secretary Theresa May, if three or more multi millionaire land owners complain about the same Buzzard once or one multimillionaire land owner complains about the same Buzzard three times the police will be required to arrest the Buzzard and magistrates will serve it with a so called CRIMBO, or Criminal Anti Buzzard Order, and subject to extreme restrictions whether or not it is actually guilty. However, it will of course entirely ignore the same without penalty.
However, this is just the start. Rumours abound that such is the concern for the mental and financial well being of the landed classes that contingency plans are being drawn up to use advanced ground to air weapons systems such as “rapier” missiles manned by RAF regiment soldiers to “take out” Buzzards from the grounds, whilst deploying a whole squadron of Typhoon Euro Fighters to harass the buzzards from above. .
David Cameron is said to be particularly keen on the latter tactic after being impressed by the effect of NATO’S bombing strategy in Libya.
Meanwhile the peasants just plan to keep their heads down for as long as possible and try to survive the next few weeks.
Sorry, I mean pheasants.
All together now…
Randy Hack
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1
May 26, 2012 at 07:17 -
What a waste of money
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2
May 26, 2012 at 08:42 -
An intriguing manifestation of class distinction.
A pigeon-racing neighbour has, for years, been trying to get permission to control the number of raptors in the area. Since a birds of prey does not distinguish between urban ‘flying rats’ and £300 champions – and likes nothing better than nibbling the brains of its still-quivering victim – the pigeon-racing fraternity obviously feels strongly on the matter.
Their repeated lobbying of DEFRA, however, has been without effect (save for the the appearance of notices asking for informers to come forward should any pigeon-racer take the law into his [or, more improbably, her] own hands).
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4
May 26, 2012 at 10:18 -
I have absolutely no idea about the habits of the landed gentry in matters pheasant, nor do I have any particular views about shooting. There are shoots in my part of West Sussex, leading to a good supply of very cheap pheasants (occasionally free), vastly better than chicken.
The very few buzzards here would not I would have thought be a problem.Pheasants are reared in quantity to shoot. They seem to be fat and overfed from the samples I eat. I can well imagine such a guaranteed source of clumsy prey could lead to uncontrolled population growth in raptors.
Visiting family recently at Woodley, between Reading and Wokingham I was amazed at the plague of red kites on suburban roofs. I saw a pair this week west of Chichester.
Just a view.
On a more mundane level, what to do about the skyrats that have spent the past month devouring just the the tip leaves of my much loved purple. sprouting? -
5
May 26, 2012 at 10:19 -
If my occasional trips to rural environs are anything to go by, the Ford Ka and Renault Clio are by far the pen-reared pheasant’s greater predator!
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6
May 27, 2012 at 10:35 -
Beat me to it Julia, always amazed at the raptor = shortage of pheasant argument, a couple of years back on a short cut back to home I came across between 50 -80 road kill pheasants in a 100yd stretch, sort of mass suicide, the shoot was going on apace a little way on with birds laid out in number, shortage don’t think so.
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7
May 26, 2012 at 10:24 -
Dear Mick, though I don’t want to quibble,
My dictionary clearly states ‘nibble’
Means ‘to eat bit by bit’,
And I don’t think that it
Requires dentition in the mandible.-
8
May 26, 2012 at 11:38 -
PS Macmillan also gives ‘to bite gently’ – and even includes the (somewhat perverse) example, ‘The parrot nibbled her ear’.
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9
May 26, 2012 at 13:06 -
My OED clearly says “bite”
Qualified though by dainty or slight.
It cannot be great
For the plumed edentate
To nibble on ears, but you’re right.
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11
May 26, 2012 at 19:19 -
If you substitute ‘via’ for ‘in the’, then I think that works rather well.
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12
May 26, 2012 at 10:25 -
So that is the reason the landed gentry are being paid to install numerous large bird mincers on their land, I thought it was just for the money – shame.
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13
May 26, 2012 at 10:31 -
Still, plenty of road kill, often virtually intact and no lead shot (don’t you find that the nouveau riche shooters tend to mangle the birds?)
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14
May 26, 2012 at 10:32 -
DEFRA funding a buzzard control scheme? About time too, and nice to Defra doing something useful for a change. The conservation mafia have been giving far too much attention to raptors, rather to the exclusion of smaller birds, including some very dubious ‘reintroductions’ of raptors to areas where evidence for their historical presence is at best somewhat thin.
Freedom for skylarks, I say! Down with the buzzards!
(Well, not all of them – a small population of top predators is sustainable.)
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17
May 26, 2012 at 10:39 -
Do take that chip off your shoulder Randy.
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20
May 26, 2012 at 13:56 -
Buzzards are in the main carrion eaters rather than raptors.
And come to Somerset – there’s more pheasants per square yard here than anywhere else in the world, I swear. And a lot of buzzards as well. They seem to coexist.
Sigh………….
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21
May 26, 2012 at 14:13 -
Point taken about carrion – but that’s what the RSPB are still saying about Red Kites, despite the fact that they are regularly seen catching squirrels and other live prey.
Admittedly the Kites would rather someone else did the difficult bit, preferring to raid barbecues, dustbins and, now the picnic season is here, packed lunches at the local school.
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23
May 26, 2012 at 19:42 -
I’d disagree with that, Jeremy; although I too live in Somerset, the highest pop. density of pheasants I have ever seen was surely in W. Sussex, even higher than that in East Anglia.
Which is good news, really; they are both handsome and make for good eating. They are a pain if they adopt you, though, as they take a perverse delight in pecking at the chrome bits on the car…
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24
May 26, 2012 at 18:13 -
A’ licence to control’ system is the way forward for a variety of pests which damage rural livelehoods. eg, Cormorants on fishing lakes, badgers in dairy areas and buzzards nesting in rearing coverts.
Application to issue licence to be straight forward when application backed by relevent concerned body, ie NFU, NGO.
Be aware that the kneejerk outcry aginst any contr l of predator species by rspb / rspca types, is largely responsible for the drastic decline in song bird species. See ‘Save Our Songbirds’ campaign for statistical details. -
25
May 26, 2012 at 20:19 -
The vultures suppressing the buzzards. Now that’s sometyhing you don’t see every day.
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26
May 26, 2012 at 20:53 -
Rapiers were phased out of RAF Regiment service in 2008 and the Royal Artillery is now responsible for ground based anti-aircraft missiles.
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