Dead Robins

[david and julie]

Did you hear on the radio today about W**vale Garden Centres. Apparently they have killed(or had killed) a nesting family of Robins, W**vale said the birds were nesting in one of their cafe's and were a health hazard. Many organisations are up in arms about this, robins are a protected species. W**vale have apologised for it but apparently people are voting with their feet and have blacklisted them. Pity we don't do this with other things in this country.

 

[amelia]

It was a disgusting thing to do. I couldn't agree more. Stand up and be counted!

 

[pipme]

Think you may find that the cafe in question went through the correct channels to find a solution ..... At least thats what was said on the West Country news ...... I mean do they shut the business down ? Perhaps some people desparately rely on that to survive.

Read more here :-

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bristol/3738671.stm

P

 

[amelia]

They should have stopped them building the nest in the first place. Unhygienic or not, some people would like to sit and have a coffee knowing there's a family of robins above them. The garden centre in question only needed to put up with it for a couple of weeks.

 

[Igorian]

Unhygienic or not, some people would like to sit and have a coffee knowing there's a family of robins above them.

I doubt that Health & Safety would agree with you there. They would have been forced to close down. While I sympathize, I think if you were to analyse most large businesses, you would find they do a variety of un-environmentally friendly stuff!

 

[david and julie]

Surely if they moved the nest the adults would of stayed away. I would of thought a bit of mesh over the air vents would also help.

I agree that it would be impractical to close the business, but to me it sounded like the last resort was actually the first.

When did being official make something right? Iraq seems to spring to mind!

 

[pipme]

I suppose we have to try and make the checks and balances of society work ... testing the procedures.

I guess that the protection society involved may be just doing that right now, in Rob's case.

It could be that people generally thought the Cafe owners swatted the birds out of hand, depending upon where they gleaned the info .... patently they did not.

P

 

[david and julie]

Health and safety is a smokescreen, the alarm as been set off, the birds did it and must therefore go! they are a nuisance.

Garden Centres are teeming with creepy crawlies and chemicals of all sorts. If Defra are serious about H+S they would stop the serving of food in all of them!

As for the to--ers at Defra, they mismanaged foot and mouth too! so badly in fact, that they got a new name to try confuse us!

The management must be kicking themselves for this. They could of saved these birds and got really positive publicity from the BBC.
We are talking probably the biggest gardening outfit in the country here!

Many gardeners and bird lovers will remember this, as far as I'm concerned they can stick their garden centres up their a---s!

 

[AdamW]

Health and safety is a smokescreen, the alarm as been set off, the birds did it and must therefore go! they are a nuisance.

If I recall, "nuisance" is not reason enough to legally remove a bird's nest. I think it actually has to pose an actual danger, rather than something which can be solved through other means (i.e. cordoning off part of a cafe for a few weeks).

Look at this

If I can put up with being awoken at 4am for a few months (those birds seemed to be procreating non-stop!) by chicks in my bedroom gable, I think a garden centre can sort out their problem without needlessly destroying a nest and killing a family.

 

[david and julie]

Bang on Adam. A nuisance is not enough so use H+S as justification.

The weather in Manchester is lovely today, all I can smell is fires and barbies in the back gardens. Nobody seems to be bothered about bird s--t to me.

Hope Defra don't find out and stop everyone!