counting coots

I thought it might be worth noting a slightly sinister occurrence related to this blog regarding Ruddy Ducks.

On the stat counter yesterday there was a visitor from the Central Science Laboratory (CSL) in York (hi!), who had arrived on the blog via a google search for ‘Ruddy Duck sightings UK – June 2009’.

Some of you may know the significance of this information, but for those that don’t I’ll summarise (and it may help explain the ‘humour’ behind the previous post). It has been decided that the population of non-native Ruddy Ducks in the UK are likely to interbreed with the White Headed Ducks in Spain which are vulnerable, so they (RD) must be eliminated. At a cost of around £5m. The CSL are allied with Defra in the cull (and I think that they may be the ones with the guns). Now there are many arguments for and against all this culling and in the Surrey and London groups there has been a bit of a bun fight, but my info is intended to be presented neutrally.

A simple search on the interweb can find postings of where people are finding Ruddy Ducks and obviously the CSL are using birders’ information which is being presented innocently (and perhaps naively) as a means of aiming the guns in the ‘right’ place.

In a circular way, my point is this. If you want them culled, keep posting the sightings. If you don’t, keep your mouth shut.