British King Charles III adopts hens, quits pigeon racing

Ben Madilynn Ben Madilynn August 26, 2024

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(Beth Clifton collage)

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(Beth Clifton collage)

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(Beth Clifton collage)

But will Charles,  patron of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds,  give up recreationally shooting birds by the thousands?

         LONDON, U.K.––King Charles III of the United Kingdom,  75,  perhaps in partial atonement for a lifetime of recreationally massacring birds,  has adopted 31 retired laying hens from the British Hen Welfare Trust and ended official royal involvement in pigeon racing,  after 138 years.

Disclosed Carly Silva for Parade on August 23,  2024,  “King Charles III recently made several new additions to his Gloucestershire estate by re-homing 31 new chickens to live at Highgrove Gardens.”

“Special milestone for the British Hen Welfare Trust”

Silva welcomed the adoptions as “a special milestone for the British Hen Welfare Trust,”  since among the 31 hens were the one millionth hen rehomed by the trust,  named Henrietta.

Founded by Jane Howorth in April 2005,  the British Hen Welfare Trust evolved,  explained Clare Lissaman of BBC News on December 9,  2011,  after Howorth,  “a former personal assistant,  moved from Berkshire to a home with some land in Chulmleigh,  Devon,  in 1995.”

“I went to get 12 battery hens and felt sorry for them and collected three dozen,”  completely filling her car,  Howorth recalled.

“One hen had a stance like a penguin”

“One particular hen had a stance like a penguin.  I think other hens used to bully her,  so I separated her,”  finding the hen  “very communicative” and responsive.

“I built a relationship with her,”  Howorth told Lissaman,  “and it made me realize there is a lot more to hens than chicken dinners and popping out eggs.”

The official aim of the British Hen Welfare Trust,  which does not raise funds from the public,  but claims annual income and expenditures in the neighborhood of £650,000,  “is to improve the living conditions of commercial laying hens by improving understanding of hen welfare and providing homes for hens destined for slaughter.”

The British Hen Welfare Trust now has “over 1,400 volunteers and 48 rehoming sites around the UK to save and rehome over 60,000 commercial laying hens each year,”  it says.

Royal recognition

Howorth was made a Mistress of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II (1926-2022) for her work on behalf of hens in 2016.  This and similar honors are conferred on a wide array of distinguished individuals each year on the official Queen’s Birthday,  whose work is mostly not personally known by anyone in the royal family.

Charles III,  coronated on May 5,  2024,  eight months after the death of his mother,  four days later renewed patronage of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds,  a 120-year-old role which before his tenure had been strictly ceremonial.

None of Charles III’s royal predecessors personally demonstrated either much humane concern for birds as sentient beings,  or conservation concern for birds as species,  let alone for plebeian species such as hens and pigeons.

Royal Society for the Protection of Birds

Neither has the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds itself to date shown much concern for birds bred for human use.

The initial concern of the organization was conservation of species with bright plumage,  some of which were jeopardized at the time by the fad of using feathers to ornament women’s hats.

Founded in 1889 as two separate groups,  the Plumage League and the Fin,  Fur,  & Feather Folk,  the Society for the Protection of Birds resulted from an 1891 merger.

The Society for the Protection of Birds,  remaining focused on conservation of species ever since,  gained royal patronage in 1904.

Pigeon racing

While King Charles III quickly renewed royal patronage of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, he just as quickly dropped patronage of the Royal Pigeon Racing Association,  the British governing body for pigeon racing,  and of the National Flying Club.

The Pigeon Racing Association may no longer call itself “royal.”

Pigeon racing,  reported Richard Palmer for the Guardian,  was “a sport his mother,  Queen Elizabeth II,  grandfather George VI,  great-grandfather George V,  and great-great-grandfather Edward VII all took part in enthusiastically.

“Some in the sport now fear there is worse to come,”  Palmer wrote,  “and that King Charles III  may ultimately end his family’s participation in the sport entirely and shut the royal pigeon loft at his Sandringham estate.

Leopold II of Belgium

“The royal family have taken part in the sport,”  Palmer recounted,  “since Belgium’s King Leopold II (1835-1909) gave Queen Victoria racing pigeons in 1886.”

That,  rather than concern for pigeons,  may have been Charles III’s primary motivation.

Leopold II of Belgium formed the so-called Congo Free State as a private colonial venture,  managed for personal profit with exceptional cruelty exercised over indigenous slave labor by the mercenary militia Force Publique. 

Most notorious,  Leopold’s mercenaries amputated the hands of men, women, and children who failed to meet rubber harvesting quotas.  Leopold’s actions were among the first to be internationally denounced as “crimes against humanity.”

PETA blamed

The British royal pigeon loft at Sandringham “got a £40,000 renovation in 2015 when Queen Elizabeth won planning permission to build a new residence,  complete with top-of-the range nesting boxes for her 200 pigeons,”  recalled Palmer.

Predicted National Flying Club treasurer Paul Naum,  to Palmer,  “I should think in about 18 months or two years they will probably dismantle it.”

Elaborated Palmer,  “Naum blamed the monarch’s apparent loss of enthusiasm for the sport on protests from the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA),  which has lobbied the king to end his support for pigeon racing,  arguing that it is cruel and results in thousands of exhausted or disoriented birds dying in races each year,  especially when flying home across the Channel.

         (See Pigeon racing is animal abandonment! by Elizabeth Young,  and How pigeon flying lost the way;  also Don’t know pigeons from bowling balls? Among pigeon rollers, you’ll fit right in.)

Bird-shooting

Royal family involvement in blood sports,  already controversial during Queen Victoria’s reign,  first rekindled public outrage during the tenure of Queen Elizabeth II when her husband Prince Philip (1921-2021),  father of Charles II,  reportedly shot 15,500 captive-raised birds at Sandringham in a five-week spree coinciding with the 1961 distribution of one of the first fundraising appeals that he signed as a founding patron of the World Wildlife Fund.

Charles III,  age 12 at the time,  was apparently not yet a participant in ritual bird massacres,  but joined Philip and his brothers Andrew and Edward in shooting nearly 18,000 captive-raised pigeons,  pheasants,  partridges,  ducks,  geese,  and rabbits at Sandringham during a six-week spree at Christmas 1987.

Introducing sons Harry and William to hunting at the ages of seven and 10,  respectively, against the wishes of their late mother Princess Diana,  Charles III and friends reportedly shot 12,000 pheasants at Sandringham at Christmas 1991.

Off with her head!

ABC News reported on November 20,  2000 that Charles III’s mother,  Elizabeth II ,  “delivered a silent rebuke to animal rights activists who objected to her killing a wounded game bird with her bare hands.

“A day after she was criticized for wringing the neck of a pheasant who had been peppered with shot,”  ABC News explained,  “the queen went to church on Sunday wearing pheasant feathers in her hat.

“The wounded pheasant had been retrieved by one of the queen’s dogs.”

Elizabeth II further thumbed her nose at animal advocates in October 2001 by offering bagged partridge and pheasant shot by family members for sale at the Windsor Castle gift shop.

Whether Charles III had any role in this venture is unclear.

More royal mayhem

The Queen was again photographed in the act of killing a wounded pheasant,  this time bludgeoning the pheasant with her walking stick,  at a Sandringham shoot in January 2004.

Later in 2004,  Philip and several friends blasted birds at Sandringham in front of children from a nearby school,  many of whom belonged to the school bird-watching club,  an affiliate of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

During the first decade of the present century,  scandals involving the hunting-related activities of the royal family occurred more-or-less annually.

Prince Harry and two companions,  for example,  escaped prosecution for allegedly killing two hen harriers,  a protected species,  at Sandringham on October 24,  2007,  while nominally hunting ducks and pigeons.
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