How UK Falconers Can Support Raptor Conservation: Projects, Record Keeping and Ethical Practice

Falconry in the UK rests on a simple fact: healthy wild raptor populations. The same countryside that gives us game, moorland, hedgerows and thermals is the countryside our birds fly through, and much of it is in trouble. The good news is that falconers hold a set of skills that conservation badly needs — handling, incubation, rearing, conditioning, transport, observation — and there are straightforward ways to point those skills outwards.

Where falconry and conservation actually meet

Raptor conservation in Britain runs largely on volunteers. Nest monitoring, box schemes, ringing, rehabilitation, persecution monitoring: nearly all of it is done by people giving up weekends. Falconers are unusually well placed to help because they already understand birds of prey in a way that most volunteers have to learn from scratch. You know how to read weight and condition, how to handle a bird without injuring it, and how to spot the difference between a healthy chick and one that needs intervention.

There is also a reputational argument. Falconry carries historical baggage around wild take and around persecution, and no amount of denial shifts that. Turning up at a raptor study group meeting, offering to build boxes or log sightings, does more for the sport's standing than any amount of arguing online.

Projects worth putting your name to

You do not need to found anything. Attach yourself to work that already exists and is short of hands.

• Local raptor study groups. Regional groups across Scotland, northern England, Wales and the south coordinate nest monitoring and disturbance recording. They need people who can sit quietly with a telescope for three hours and write down what they see.
• Species recovery and reintroduction schemes. Red kite, white-tailed eagle and osprey projects have relied on volunteer help with monitoring, site protection and transport for years. Breeding or rearing experience is especially welcome where hand-rearing or fostering is involved.
• Nest box schemes. Kestrels, barn owls, tawny owls and urban peregrines all benefit from well-sited boxes. Building is easy; the value is in monitoring, cleaning and reporting what is inside, year after year.
• Wildlife rehabilitation. Centres are often short of people confident with raptors. Offer to help under their licence rather than taking wild birds home yourself — holding wild birds without the correct authorisation is an offence.
• Recording. Submit casual sightings and nesting evidence to county recorders and national schemes. Distribution data drives planning decisions, and it is only as good as what gets sent in.

Ringing is a separate matter. Only licensed ringers can ring wild birds, but you can assist a trained ringer, and the experience is worth having.

Breeding programmes and why provenance matters

Captive breeding takes pressure off wild populations and preserves bloodlines that would otherwise be lost. It also generates data that conservation bodies value, provided the records are honest. Record parentage, ring numbers, hatch dates, weights at key stages, fertility, infertility and losses — including the failures. A breeding programme that only documents its successes is not evidence of anything.

Be selective about where surplus birds go. Ask buyers what they intend to do with the bird, whether they have flown before, and who their vet is. If you are working with species listed on Annex A of the CITES regulations, the Article 10 paperwork governs commercial use, and it must reflect reality. Sloppy paperwork in a breeding room becomes a problem for the whole hobby.

Habitat work on your own patch

Voles, mice, small birds and insects are the base of the food chain your birds sit on top of. If you have any land — a paddock, an acre, a large garden — you can improve it cheaply.

• Leave a rough grass margin uncut through winter. It feeds small mammals and invertebrates.
• Lay or coppice a hedge on rotation rather than flailing it flat every year.
• Put up a kestrel or owl box on a quiet boundary, well away from public paths.
• Keep a scruffy corner: log pile, nettle patch, a shallow pond with a gently sloping edge.

If you fly on farmland, talk to the landowner about headlands and margins rather than just asking for access. Predator control is a contentious subject; stick to legal methods and never put anything down that could take a protected bird. On any question involving protected species or licensing, take advice from the relevant statutory body — Natural England, NatureScot, Natural Resources Wales or DAERA — rather than from a forum thread or a well-meaning friend.

Record keeping that stands up to scrutiny

Records protect the bird, the falconer and the sport. They prove provenance, support welfare decisions, and stand behind you if anyone ever asks awkward questions. A spreadsheet and a ring-binder will do; the discipline matters more than the software.

1. Species, sex, close-ring number, hatch date and breeder.
2. Date and source of acquisition, with the seller's name and address.
3. Weight chart — a weekly figure is enough, logged consistently.
4. Moult notes, condition and any lameness or feather damage.
5. Veterinary visits, treatments, medicine names and dates given.
6. Training and flying notes: where, what quarry, how the bird performed.
7. Transfers, sales, escapes, recovery and, when the time comes, death and disposal.

Keep certificates — including Article 10 documents where they apply — with the bird when it moves on, and keep copies for yourself. Back the whole lot up digitally. Some species carry additional registration or close-ringing requirements under the Wildlife and Countryside Act, and the arrangements differ between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and have changed in recent years, so check the current position with the relevant authority before you acquire a bird.

Good records should let a stranger reconstruct a bird's entire life without asking you a single question.

Ethical practice in the field

Disturbance and timing

Learn where the sensitive sites are near your flying ground. Birds on Schedule 1 — and their nests and young — receive extra legal protection, and disturbance at the wrong moment can cause a nesting attempt to fail. If a wild raptor is displaying or calling a warning at you, take the hint and move on. Keep dogs under control, especially in spring on ground where curlew, lapwing or skylark are nesting.

Quarry, permission and law

Know the season and legal status of everything you fly at, and never fly at a protected species. Get permission in writing where you can, and be the visitor a landowner is pleased to see again. Prevent escapes: a lost bird is a welfare problem, and for Schedule 4 species it is a reporting matter. If a bird does go missing, tell your local club, alert the relevant register and notify the police where the species requires it.

Be useful, visibly

Answer questions from walkers without sighing. Share your sightings. Let the local raptor group know when you find a nest. Reputation is built in these small exchanges, and it is spent quickly by defensiveness.

Getting started: a practical first season

Pick one thing and do it properly. Join your local raptor study group or a nest box scheme, and put in four mornings this spring. Start a proper logbook for every bird you keep and keep it current — this moult is a good time to begin. Build one box and get permission to site it. Buy captive-bred where you can, and ask breeders the awkward questions that make paperwork honest. Flag any persecution you witness to the police and to the recognised raptor crime reporting routes.

None of this requires money or a title. It requires the habits you already have: patience, observation, and turning up when the weather is poor. Pointed at the right places, those habits do real conservation work.

Photo: hapr80 / Pixabay