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Peer's gamekeeper fined for killing three kestrel

A GAMEKEEPER on one of England's most celebrated country estates was ordered to pay fines and costs of almost £1,000 yesterday after admitting shooting and poisoning birds of prey.

Martin Joyce, a keeper on the Earl of Leicester's estate at Holkham, Norfolk, shot two kestrels in a fit of rage when he saw them attacking young partridges. He poisoned another kestrel, magistrates at Fakenham were told.

The 3,000-acre estate at Wells-next-the-Sea was a model of agricultural improvement in the 19th century under the Earl's ancestor, Thomas Coke. Yesterday the Earl's heir, the present Viscount Coke, said the keeper would not be sacked.

Joyce was prosecuted after a walker found the poisoned kestrel dead next to a chick that had been laced with the pesticide Carbofuran. Police and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds launched an investigation and found the two dead kestrels in a bucket in Joyce's vehicle, and a "poisoner's kit" of chemicals, needles, syringes and bowls in outbuildings at his cottage. Joyce, 36, married with two children, was fined a total of £850 and ordered to pay £100 costs.

Published: March 15, 2000