![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Screenshot-2023-12-14-at-08.13.29-550x404.png\")
<\/p>\nI got a call yesterday to tell me that there were ruddy ducks on the river in Ely.<\/p>\n
I am not a twitcher - meaning that I don't chase rare birds - but this was enough to suggest a diversion to see them would be worthwhile.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, the story was only partly true. These are what I saw:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Those two rather pretty ducks look like ruddy shellducks to me, which are quite different to ruddy ducks.<\/p>\n
Until a decade or so ago, we had a rising population of ruddy shellduck; all of them originally escaped from collections because these are Indian birds of origin that have not, as far as I know, ever made their own way here.<\/p>\n
The trouble was that these escaped ducks all too easily hybridised without the native shellduck population and were thought to be a threat to it. They have, unlike other escapes, including Canada and greylag geese, been ruthlessly culled as a result<\/a>.<\/p>\n I suspect that will be the fate of these two, which left me feeling a little sorry for them.<\/p>\n But it also made me worry that there are too many politicians who take the same attitude towards people in what they think to be the wrong place, and that left me very uncomfortable. How else would we end up with the callousness of the Rwanda policy and the Bibby Stockholm barge?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"