Bird brains

Colin Strang Steel has used my recent letter to promote the views of Songbird Survival, an organisation which blames the decline in songbird numbers on avian and mammalian predators, and promotes culling as a means of control (Letters, 19 September).

Other organisations, like the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, blame changing farming methods for the decline, and there is evidence that these changes are more lethal to bird populations than natural predators.

Birds and mammals find many ways of adapting to predation. They have

been around for millions of years, a testament to their survival success. Numerous species prey on birds’ eggs and fledglings, but the birds compensate for the loss by laying several eggs. If the number of fledglings falls, the survival rate of those left untouched can increase, since there’s less competition for food in the nest.

An apex predator like the sparrowhawk depends on a healthy population of small birds for its own survival. If it wiped out the local food supply it would be at an obvious disadvantage, so, unlike the human predator, it takes only what it needs to survive.

It doesn’t always win. Last summer, my husband and I found a young female sparrowhawk in our garden which was obviously weak and unable to fly. She was desperately hungry, attempting to catch birds on the ground, with no success. We called the local SSPCA centre, but she had disappeared when they arrived.

We found her lying dead the next morning, with her last, uneaten, prey lying by her side. She was severely emaciated, and so weak that she didn’t have the strength to eat her last meal.

Should we have celebrated her death? CAROLYN TAYLOR

Wellbank Broughty Ferry, Dundee