Not racing to hasty conclusion on guilt
Waffle and I came across a racing pigeon on the track past the curling pond wood the other day. Well, Waffle came across it first, what remained of the poor little thing, which wasn’t very much. What had “got it” in the first place is hard to tell. My immediate , thought was that it had been hit in mid air by a peregrine. There are a few about, unless it is the same one going round in circles.
The white pigeon (easy target) had been fairly well plucked to expose the breasts and whatever had been eating it on the ground had worked its way through one breast and the guts and was half way through the second when it either got indigestion or our approach frightened it off. It was certainly pretty fresh.
On the other hand my local pigeon racer says it might easily have been a cat.
Racing pigeons – and this one was only 20 miles from home after covering 400 miles on a Saturday morning race according the nice lady at the Scottish Homing Union HQ – can often drop down for a rest and anything with a crafty habit is likely to get an exhausted pigeon on the ground. The one thing I can say is that it at least hadn’t been shot.
I do wonder how many get shot, even though they don’t really look like a wood pigeon. In fact I do wonder how many completely inedible birds are shot by over enthusiastic young guns taking an unthinking punt at something that makes a handy target.
I can’t say I haven’t been guilty in the past. I once rather casually admitted to a couple of Forestry Commission conservationists over a few drinks that I had fired at a lumbering great black thing in a pine forest during a shoot, which turned out to be a capercaillie.
“You don’t get many brownie points for that round here,” I was rather dustily informed.
Not for shooting the caper (it was then still legal to shoot caper) but for taking a shot at something I had failed to positively identify.
In those days “if it flies it dies” was a fairly widely held nostrum. One caper, buzzard or harrier less wasn’t considered a problem. We now know better, or should do.
These days I am almost over cautious if such a thing is possible and quite likely not to shoot at all on a day’s rough shooting when anything can come out of nowhere. Protected Jack snipe are the worst as they look like small, bog standard yet unprotected snipe.
Still, I am big enough these days to shrug off a guaranteed ribbing for being dozy on the job and not firing at a perfectly legitimate quarry. Hardly the killer instinct. But there you go. n