What Do You Think About Birds Of Prey?

[amym389]

My name is Amy and I am a third-year student at Nottingham Trent University. I am studying for my BSc Wildlife Conservation degree, and I have created this questionnaire to determine public perceptions of birds of prey in Northern Ireland compared to England. The data received will be analysed and interpreted for my dissertation. All returned questionnaires will be completely anonymous, so please answer all questions honestly.

‘Birds of prey’ and ‘raptors’ may be used interchangeably throughout.

In total, there are 15 mandatory questions and 6 optional questions. However, if you do not want to answer a question, you do not need to.

It would be massively appreciated if you could fill this in. It only takes a few minutes of your time. Here is the link:
https://ntusurvey.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/zyhqnbdvn9-11

 

[Raider112]

My name is Amy and I am a third-year student at Nottingham Trent University. I am studying for my BSc Wildlife Conservation degree, and I have created this questionnaire to determine public perceptions of birds of prey in Northern Ireland compared to England. The data received will be analysed and interpreted for my dissertation. All returned questionnaires will be completely anonymous, so please answer all questions honestly.

‘Birds of prey’ and ‘raptors’ may be used interchangeably throughout.

In total, there are 15 mandatory questions and 6 optional questions. However, if you do not want to answer a question, you do not need to.

It would be massively appreciated if you could fill this in. It only takes a few minutes of your time. Here is the link:
https://ntusurvey.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/zyhqnbdvn9-11

Have we not already done this or is this a different one?

 

[amym389]

S

Have we not already done this or is this a different one?

Same one, just trying to get more responses

 

[PaulNix]

How is this different to the one you posted up i am guessing 2-3 weeks ago ?

Hopefully this one is better written and looks like it is written by someone and for people who understand birds of prey and not just like is was written for the facebook generation to reach a already decided conclusion.

 

[DrWazzock]

I don't mind birds of prey. If they started taking lambs I probably would mind them. They are protected though, so i wouldn't be able to do much about them, like everything else really. Stand back and watch your business get decimated because the government has banned and stopped everything that's useful to please the ill informed pseudo green, hypocritical suburban voters.

That's it really. That's a fair standard response to most of these wildlife surveys.

Leave a dead sheep out to feed the scavengers and you would be in big trouble though. They expect all these carnivores to look pretty and live on straw I suppose, or a vegan diet.

Whole thing morally duplicitous, hypocritical hogwash.

Do I care. Not really any more. I just get on and keep my head down. People have already made their minds up.

 

[DrWazzock]

Done the survey. Not sure of one of the birds. As in Thomas Hardy's day, you will find country folk don't know familiar things by their name but just by what they look like, where they are, what they do.
Birds of prey sit on pole, screech, pounce on things and carry then away. I like to see them, especially when they keeping the pigeons off or killing a rat.

 

[Danllan]

...As in Thomas Hardy's day, you will find country folk don't know familiar things by their name...

That's an everyday tale...

 

[DrWazzock]

What it's called, what it's name is, and what it actually is, is often debatable, as our mathematics teacher used to say.

 

[Bury the Trash]

If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck it's a duck.

 

[Dry Rot]

This nest box was put up by me for the benefit of house sparrows. I like sparrows becuse they attract sparrowhawks and I like sparrowhawks even more! Yeah, I admit it, I'm a bit eccentric.

 

[Sandpit Farm]

I have done it. Some of the questions are very black and white, which I get as that is what a questionnaire is designed to do. It is just that I feel that culling of certain species is justified with permission where an inbalance has been created.... however, I am against indiscriminate culling. Those questions don't really allow for that view so it looks like I am very pro raptors.

 

[Sandpit Farm]

This nest box was put up by me for the benefit of house sparrows. I like sparrows becuse they attract sparrowhawks and I like sparrowhawks even more! Yeah, I admit it, I'm a bit eccentric.

Just feed the pigeons!

 

[nick...]

Far too many about destroying all the little song birds.we are overrun with buzzards,kites,and all manor of hawks that regularly get self service of our bird tables.what will happen when the little birds have gone ive no idea,maybe the bigger birds will kill each other
Nick...

 

[deleted user 837354]

How is this different to the one you posted up i am guessing 2-3 weeks ago ?

Hopefully this one is better written and looks like it is written by someone and for people who understand birds of prey and not just like is was written for the facebook generation to reach a already decided conclusion.

I doubt it.

I would like to see more questions along the lines of: which course do you think birds of prey should be served as and with what kind of sauce?

 

[uztrac]

Earlier this year I was out and about in the middle of Norfolk and interrupted a sparrowhawk having a meal of an owlet that it had retrieved from an owls nest box.I was not a happy bunny but that's life,barn owls are getting rarer even around me.

 

[DrWazzock]

I feed the sparrows wheat since the time when we nearly lost the colony due to Red Tractor requirements to make the grain store bird proof. They make a mess but I like to see and hear them about. And as said, food for the sparrow hawk.

I wonder if people realise that the price of "standards" is starvation for some wee beasties.

We have both barn owls and small owls. But no rats and mice is a difficult situation for these birds.

Cats are undoubtedly the biggest predators for song birds from what I have seen.

 

[Dry Rot]

Far too many about destroying all the little song birds.we are overrun with buzzards,kites,and all manor of hawks that regularly get self service of our bird tables.what will happen when the little birds have gone ive no idea,maybe the bigger birds will kill each other
Nick...

If you are over run with birds of prey, that indicates that there is a healthy food supply, not the opposite.

 

[Roy_H]

I remember when I was young it was a rare sight to see a buzzard, now they are everywhere!

 

[steveR]

Far too many about destroying all the little song birds.we are overrun with buzzards,kites,and all manor of hawks that regularly get self service of our bird tables.what will happen when the little birds have gone ive no idea,maybe the bigger birds will kill each other
Nick...

As an old mate (top flight researcher and writer) once told me 30 odd years ago, bird populations have always rocketed and then dived to the floor.

Disease is sometimes part of it, but Simon said it was mainly down to food pressure, and top predators are particularly affected when/if their primary food source goes for reasosna of bad weather or changing environments

 

[steveR]

Earlier this year I was out and about in the middle of Norfolk and interrupted a sparrowhawk having a meal of an owlet that it had retrieved from an owls nest box.I was not a happy bunny but that's life,barn owls are getting rarer even around me.

Buzzards are a known killer of owlets too... Buggers will sit on a branch above the nesting box just waiting...