Songbird Survival Bloodsport Background

The organisation "Songbird Survival" has been behind much of the anti-magpie and birds of prey propaganda in the last few years. A registered charity, with an expensive website, it looks convincing. That is, until you realise there is a darker side, and the real motivator behind the site is a man spurred on by an ugly incident five years before it was formed. Viscount Coke, a principle Trustee and spokesman for the organisation has set out to remove any mud that has stuck on his good character by setting himself up as the self avowed saviour of song birds. It is highly likely that the profits of his family's game shooting business occupied his mind before the year 2000, when he recieved the attentions of Norfolk police.

Viscount Coke (34) son of the Earl of Leicester, threatened to sue the police and Crown Prosecution Service after being cleared of allowing a gamekeeper to illegally use poison on the family's Norfolk estate. The heir to the Holkham estate near Wells-next-the-Sea, had faced 12 charges following the conviction in March this year of one of the estate's gamekeepers, who admitted killing a kestrel with a poisoned pheasant carcass. However, on 15/6/00 magistrates at Fakenham, said Viscount Coke had no case to answer.

Land agent Richard Gledson (37) and head gamekeeper John King (62) had all denied charges relating to food and environment protection legislation, and pesticide regulations. Gledson and King were each convicted of three charges of allowing a gamekeeper on the 25,000-acre estate illegally to store poison and were fined £1,200 and £750 respectively. In March Martin Joyce, a gamekeeper was fined £850 for the killing of three kestrels on Holkham Estate in Norfolk. He admitted to shooting two birds and poisoning a third because he blamed them for attacking young partridges.