Madam, – Daniel Collins’s strongly worded letter of July 12th insinuates that magpies are taking a substantial toll on the songbird population around Dublin city. The evidence for such an opinion is omitted, yet his solution to the problem is to encourage a cull of these wonderful creatures.
It might put Mr Collins’s mind at ease if he familiarised himself with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RPSB) website and in particular the surveys and studies in this regard, the results of which suggest there is no statistically significant link between the increase of predator numbers and the decline of prey numbers. In fact, it is understood that only approximately 10 per cent of a magpie’s diet is eggs and chicks. It would appear that science does not agree with Mr Collins’s biased opinions. – Yours, etc,