Twitcher killers

Birdwatchers have been blamed for hounding a rare starling to death. The rose-coloured starling, originally from Central Asia, had been blown thousands of miles off-course and landed near Great Yarmouth in Norfolk, and its repeated attempts to evade dozens of camera-wielding birdwatchers left it exhausted.

An estimated 80 twitchers descended on the Norfolk village of Winterton-on-Sea in an attempt to catch a glimpse of the bird.

According to Carole Barnes, a villager and member of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the persistent attentions of the birdwatchers, who pursued it from garden to garden, finally led to the five-month-old bird dying of exhaustion.

Barnes said: "Twitchers hounded this bird to its death. It was tired and desperate to feed but they wouldn't leave it alone. They were running up and down like lunatics and weren't interested in its welfare at all.

"They kept following it around and pointing their long lenses at it. They just wanted to get its picture so that they could cross it off their list and say they had seen it."

Barnes, a nursing sister, said she first realised something was happening when birdwatchers started flocking into her street a week ago.

She said: "They all had zoom lenses and tripods and were rushing down the path that leads to our home. I told them it was private, but they took no notice. They went to the back of our garden and started following it around.

"The bird was so tired it could only flutter a little way and couldn't get away from them. When I pointed out that it was exhausted, they insisted that they only wanted to take its picture so they could say they had seen it."

Last Tuesday, Barnes and her husband, Peter, found the bird dead in their garden after being attacked by the cat.

She said: "Even after it died we still had twitchers turning up. We've never seen such thoughtless behaviour."

A spokesman for the RSPB said: "The bird was already looking poorly and it had two big ticks on its head. We have a code of conduct stating birds should not be disturbed and their interests should always come first. All birdwatchers are supposed to abide by it.