THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, November 18, 1995 TAG: 9511181495
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A15 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: George Hebert
LENGTH: Medium: 52 lines
The peregrine falcon has gotten itself into the news in various ways in recent years - sometimes because of human efforts to keep it going as a species and often for its liking of high buildings (in urban centers like ours, for instance) as nesting places and launching pads for pigeon chases.
In one recent example of this news-making trait - a few thousand miles from here - the reason for public attention was something a little different. It seems that an ugly mystery had developed 80 feet up on a quarry wall near the English village of Shrewsbury. A pair of peregrines were nesting on a ledge there. And for three years in a row, a ``neighborhood hatch'' group, keeping an eye on the breeding pair had reported the disappearance of the successive broods of chicks, five little ones all told.
In a London Times article passed along to me by Norfolk attorney Stanley Jones, the solution of the riddle has been found. A polecat (European species) was the villain. At least an official of the Shropshire Wildlife Trust was 99 percent sure after an investigation.
At first the trust had feared that two-legged predators were to blame. But this was pretty well ruled out after polecat sightings in the area were weighed, along with the difficulty of human access to the spot occupied by the birds.
However, that possibility of thievery by people, prominently mentioned in the article, was perhaps more unsettling than all the rest of the story.
For the Times explained that there was a black market in peregrine falcons on the Continent. The bait for thieves would have been the 1,000 pounds being paid per bird. The reporter didn't explain why these particular creatures were so much in demand. Just to own, to add to private or (surreptitiously) public aviaries? Or for hunters who use such keen-eyed, winged killers as medieval falconers did?
No matter. The known, routine kidnapping is itself the shocker, the shameful part. How do you wrap your mind around that?
One way, I suppose, is to remember that some people just have no scruple about taking what isn't theirs, that they will make a business of thefts of any kind if unscrupulous buyers are willing to pay.
As they say, some people will steal anything that isn't nailed down.
And that fleet wild thing called a peregrine falcon, which has come within an ace of disappearing altogether, is just about the most un-nailed-down thing on the planet. MEMO: Mr. Hebert, a former editor, lives in Norfolk. by CNB