Natures Corner

In the complaint filed against the two men in U.S. District Court, federal Fish and Wildlife Service special agent Thomas Ricardi says that he and other agents actually watched Zak kill some of the birds as they sat in trees near the fish ponds and the concrete raceway between them.

“On October 4, 2005, (agent Andrey) Guidera and I observed Zak attempt to kill a great blue heron. Zak shouldered the rifle at an upward angle, aimed for several moments ... and then fired a single shot,” he wrote in his complaint.

The heron is a wading bird with a long neck and long legs that lives along marshes and rivers.

Ricardi said that he and Guidera later went to the tree where the bird had been sitting and recovered its corpse from the ground at the base of the trunk.

According to DiIorio-Sterling, the killing of migratory birds carries, upon conviction, a possible sentence of six months in prison and $15,000 in fines for each death. This means that for the blue herons alone the two men would face a maximum sentence of more than 125 years in prison and more than $3 million in fines.

The federal government, according to wildlife experts, can issue permits to fish hatcheries to shoot a limited number of predatory birds in order to protect their livestock, but according to Ricardi, no such permits were ever issued to Zak or to the Sunderland hatchery.

On May 6, Ricardi says, government agents watched as Lloyd, who works for Zak, used a rifle on a bipod placed on the back of a car, to shoot and kill an osprey perched in a tree near the western boundary of the fish hatchery.

“When Lloyd shot, (agent Patrick) Bosco saw the osprey being hit by the bullet,” he wrote.

According to the court filings, a necropsy was performed on a random sample of the bird carcasses recovered from the hatchery grounds and the examiner found that all of them had been killed by gunfire.

“Small caliber bullets, such as .223, .222, .22-50 or .22 Magnum were recovered from the carcasses. Several of the fragments were large enough to conduct ballistic comparisons to the rifles from which they were fired,” Ricardi wrote.

Tim Divoll, owner of Valley Sport Center in Easthampton, says Lloyd is a customer and has purchased firearms and ammunition. Those firearms include a rifle and handguns.

When asked about the allegations against Lloyd, Divoll said that he was “absolutely” surprised. “He seems like a nice young man,” he said.

Divoll said any ammunition Lloyd had purchased from him was not appropriate for shooting wildlife.

One bird lover’s reaction

“I can’t wait to see how high they hang these people,” said Patricia Carlisle of Turners Falls, when she was told of the arrests.

“It’s so senseless,” she said of the alleged shootings.

According to Carlisle, who avidly monitors the nesting bald eagles of Barton Cove, the local birds are well and on their nest.

“I have been watching them all day. They are both right in their nest protecting the two eaglets,” she said.

According to Carlisle, there is also a blue heron nest in Montague.

“I’m just in shock. I’m in no condition to comment at all,” she said.

Damage to bird |populations

Scott Johnston, who heads a department that studies bird populations for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, says that 20 years ago there were only about 600 great blue heron in western Massachusetts and, while the numbers have been increasing, they have not increased that much.

“Because they have been protected, the numbers have been going up, but I doubt that they have more than doubled in that time,” he said.

Wayne R. Petersen, of the Massachusetts Audubon Society, said that he would be surprised if there are more than 900 great blue herons in the western half of the state.

“Their numbers have increased significantly in recent years. You can see nesting colonies all over the state, but some of those only have five or 10 nests,” he said.

“The population has greatly increased, but the loss of 250 birds would be notable wherever it took place,” he said.

Petersen also noted that the herons that were shot this spring were killed during nesting season and thus while they were trying to feed their young.

“This, of course raises the mortality level because, if the parents are killed the young are going to starve,” he said.

Eagles

According to Marion Lawson, of the Massachusetts Wildlife Service, there are currently only four inhabited bald eagle nests along the Connecticut River Valley from the Vernon Dam in New Hampshire down to Hartford, Conn., and five or six nests in the Quabbin Reservoir.

“That gives you 20 adult birds with about 16 eaglets. There are also a number of immature eagles (from one to four years old), which are residents but not old enough to nest. Probably five to 10 birds is a conservative number for the Connecticut River and the Quabbin area,” she said.

According to Lawson, in winter the bald eagle population in the Quabbin is much higher than it is at other times of the year because the birds will flock here from other areas to feed in the open waters of the reservoir.

The federal fish and wildlife service says that illegal shooting still poses a significant threat to individual bald eagles although increased law enforcement and public awareness have reduced shooting from being a cause of large scale mortality, as it was in the first half of the 20th century, to being responsible only for the deaths of occasional individuals.

The fish and wildlife service says that nationally from 1985 to 1990, the National Wildlife Health Research Center diagnosed over 150 bald eagle deaths due to gunshot wounds.

Simon Perkins, of the Massachusetts Audubon Society, said that, given the small number of mating pairs in the state, it would not take many deaths of bald eagles to have a significant impact on the population.

Bald eagles are still on the endangered species list.

Most osprey, according to the bird experts, live along the coast and on Martha’s Vineyard, but there are only a few hundred nesting pairs in the state.

According to Lawson, there is only one osprey nest in the Connecticut River Valley, so it is likely that the animals that federal agents say they found on the grounds of the Sunderland fish hatchery were migrants

“Of course, if the birds from that nest were shot, it puts an end to the resident population,” she said.

Ironically, today is International Migratory Bird Day.