I’ve read that cuckoos arriving in Thetford forest are caught and have an electronic tag attached to gather data for a cuckoo-tracking project. Is this really going to provide any knowledge that will help the birds, or does it simply enable humans to admire their own technical wizardry? I also saw that the magnificent golden eagle featured on the BBC’s Springwatch, inevitably, had a tag, to allow for research into how reforesting in parts of Scotland might affect numbers. And the white-tailed eagles released into the wild in Scotland, with considerable success and to great acclaim, all have numbers on, and many have electronic tags. Shouldn’t the eagles be left alone to get on with it?
Martin Hayden, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
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