Birds, Leps, Observations & Generalities - the images and ramblings of Mark Skevington. Sometimes.

Friday 16 March 2012

Avian Genocide. Please.

Nipped to Watermead CP South yet again after work; it's just too easy to get there from work, and I seem to be becoming obsessed with gull's rings. As it happens, by the time I actually left work and got to WCPS it was bloody chilly with the wind whipping over the water, and as dull as dishwater (both in terms of the light and the lack of new CR gulls).

I found myself briefly looking at the tarmac, or rather the carpet of shit on top of tarmac.


Birders in boots looking at gulls is one (sad a barely explicable) thing, but why on earth would anyone bring their kids here for an ice cream. Or worse, to feed the ducks, geese and swans and perpetuate the shitting. This area is a sanitary disaster. During the two seconds that this whizzed through my brain, I looked up and saw yet more shite wadling past in a blaze of irridescent green-black. I then turned my attention to one of my pet hates. As those who know me well, I am a model of tolerance (ahem). But, please, could someone just do me and all the pure Mallards and Greylags a favour and start formally culling these monstrosities! This has to be priority, but followed swiftly by sorting out the Canadas and re-homing 80% of the unnaturally high Mute Swan population.

BANG
BANG
BANG
BANG
BANG
BANG

6 comments:

Trent Duval said...

Look at the Rock Dove....that is the Mallards future

The Leicester Llama said...

Yes, but if people didn't feed the ducks, there would be no gulls there for you to read rings on! Plus the whole area would probably have been turned into a fucking watersports complex or something if it wasn't used by so many people wanting to feel they're having some sort of contact with 'nature'.

Skev said...

I know Andy, but let's be clear - there's duck feeding (a few bits in a small bag every now and then, preferably not just bread) and there's industrial scale duck feeding. I've seen continual waves of people 'contacting with nature' with anything from a full fresh loaf to a dustbin bag full of bread. This substantial overfeeding with poor nutrition is not good for anything; sanitation, pest control, and not least the birds (apart from the gulls which can cope with pretty much anything). I think that if scavenging for scraps was good for wildfowl we'd have masses of Canadas living on rubbish tips.
I know there will always be feeding here, and I know that any control of the current inhabitants will eventually be negated by more coming in, but that shouldn't deter dealing with the high number of hybrids and farm honkers here.
Meanwhile, I don't see why one of the little road-washer sweeper type things that the Council use couldn't run around the WCPS car park and water front weekly.

The Leicester Llama said...

But it's not going to happen, is it, at a time when the Council barely has enough money for essential services, let alone satisfying your urge for avian eugenics!

Stewart said...

He heheheh....:) Go on there Victor...

You sound like me with the micro/macro thing, and Rough legged Buzzards that never are, people who twitch Pectoral Sandpiper / Black Redstart etc every year, birders who follow like sheep to the self same spots to see 'the' ( the = any bird from Smew to littoralis Rock Pipit that might reasonably be found elsewhere if you bothered your arse to look around ie "Have you seen THE littoralis/smew/black Red/ Spotshank/ etc" like there's only one on the planet), oh and people who say Spotshank / Mipit without a hint of irony...

TAXI! :)

Rohrerbot said...

In high bird traffic areas, I never understand why people would want to eat around areas full bird poo. Some gulls are actually aggressive....my brother in law had his french fries and bowl of chowder knocked out of this hands but one! I laughed so hard.
After humans are gone, Mallard ducks will be taking over the world followed by cockroaches.