London Zoo<\/a> moving its giraffes to a Kilburn housing estate and telling the locals to be quiet.<\/p>\nHis lawyers say the judge’s ruling means Mr Thomas is unreasonably restricted at his home, after the court heard the falcons are \u201cstress monsters\u201d who can be terrified even by the sight of a \u201ckite on a string\u201d.<\/p>\n
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Barnes Thomas is a former art dealer (Champion News)<\/p>\n
Mr Thomas appeared on Bear Grylls\u2019 survival show \u2018The Island\u2019 in 2018, later describing it as the \u201cworst experience of my entire life\u201d after packing a velvet coat, sleeping in an ants\u2019 nest, and accidentally burning his socks over a fire.<\/p>\n
Having grown up on a cattle farm and worked as an art dealer, Mr Thomas later set himself up as a farmer on the edge of the idyllic Cornish village of St Just, close to Land\u2019s End.<\/p>\n
But he soon found himself at war with his neighbours, the Nicholas brothers, who run their raptor business on adjoining land, breeding gyrfalcons and peregrine falcons, which they sell to be used in falcon races in Dubai.<\/p>\n
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Aerial image showing the location of the dispute between Barnes Thomas and falcon breeders, Scott and Martin Nicholas (Champion News)<\/p>\n
After finding that work on Mr Thomas\u2019 land had caused the deaths of three gyrfalcons, a judge in April last year ordered him to pay his neighbours\u2019 company about \u00a3300,000 in compensation and interest, and more than \u00a3180,000 towards the breeders\u2019 lawyers\u2019 bills, on top of his own court costs.<\/p>\n
Giving judgment following a nine-day High Court trial last year, Judge Jonathan Russen KC said the \u201cbitter\u201d row which erupted between the three had \u201cacquired real momentum…over a relatively short space of time\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mr Thomas had \u201cproved to be a controversial neighbour\u201d, creating a lake on his land, temporarily removing a stile on a public footpath \u2013 causing \u201copposition within the wider neighbourhood\u201d \u2013 and pre-empting the switching on of community Christmas lights by turning on his, and his neighbours, first. <\/p>\n
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The Nicholas brothers run their raptor business on adjoining land (Champion News)<\/p>\n
Mr Thomas and his neighbours ended up in court after they claimed that noisy work on a barn that related to his scaffolding business had effectively scared three valuable birds to death.<\/p>\n
The brothers sued for nuisance and negligence, arguing that the work undertaken during their birds’ breeding seasons had caused the death of the birds, reduced overall breeding and also resulted in egg loss, with some birds damaging them.<\/p>\n
For three days, a JCB bucket had been raised in the birds’ line of sight, which Scott Nicholas said had caused them to \u201cgo mental at the sight of this alien object\u201d.<\/p>\n
Through their company, the brothers claimed the acts breached a duty of care \u201cnot to cause or permit the falcons to suffer excessive noise or visual threats, in particular during the breeding season\u201d.<\/p>\n
Giving judgment on the nuisance and negligence claims, Judge Russen said he was convinced that the actions of Mr Thomas and his company, Upper Cot Estate Ltd (UCE), had caused the three birds’ deaths.<\/p>\n
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Raptors House (Champion News)<\/p>\n
He said Mr Thomas had been told that March to June was the time to avoid excessive noise and visual disturbances, but that videos taken in the incubation room while building work was done on his barn showed the \u201cnoise upsetting the birds\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese activities, related to the building of the barn, cannot be said to be outside the ordinary and common use of agricultural land \u2013 but they were carried out without proper consideration of Raptors of Penwith\u2019s breeding season,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In relation to the raising of the digger bucket, he added: \u201cFor the purpose of on-site inspection by an engineer, the bucket was raised.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the bucket raised next to the aviary for those three days, the machine broke the line of sight of at least some birds in the western pens.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlacing the digger on the birds\u2019 line of sight on 7 April 2022 was entirely at odds with ensuring that no undue inconvenience was caused to Raptors of Penwith.\u201d<\/p>\n
The judge found that three gyrfalcons died as a result of \u201cstress created by the acts of nuisance\u201d and awarded compensation in relation to them.<\/p>\n
Appealing to three senior judges at the Court of Appeal, Mr Thomas\u2019 barrister, Tom Weekes KC, this week argued that Judge Russen had got his judgment completely wrong.<\/p>\n
Arguing before Lord Justice Moylan, Lord Justice Nugee and Lady Justice Whipple, he said Mr Thomas\u2019s use of the land to erect a barn and store materials for his scaffolding business was all \u201ccommon and ordinary use of land\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said the law states that an activity on land cannot be deemed a legal \u201cnuisance\u201d if it only interferes with a \u201cparticularly sensitive occupier or a particularly sensitive trade\u201d.<\/p>\n
And it would be \u201cunfair\u201d if the brothers’ bird-breeding next door would be allowed to limit his use of his own property \u2013 \u201cso as to effectively appropriate the neighbour’s land as a buffer for the protection of the sensitive trade.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Barnes](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/BarnesThomas1.jpg\")
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Barnes Thomas outside the Court of Appeal after a hearing in the row over falcons (Champion News)<\/p>\n
\u201cThe learned judge should have dismissed ROP\u2019s nuisance claim on a straightforward application of the common law principle that \u2018a man cannot increase the liabilities of his neighbour by applying his own property to special uses, whether for business or pleasure\u2019,\u201d Mr Weekes KC said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAbsent a finding that the erection of the barn\/the scaffolding business substantially interfered with the ordinary use and enjoyment of Martin and Scott Nicholas\u2019 land, rather than ROP\u2019s sensitive business, those activities did not cross the threshold of creating an interference that was sufficiently serious to be capable of being a nuisance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although the brothers\u2019 aviary is in a rural area, if they required a \u201cbuffer\u201d to protect it, then they should either site it on a larger piece of land, erect their own audio or visual barriers or make an agreement with neighbours in relation to their activities.<\/p>\n
\u201cLeaving aside the intricacies of the legal analysis, the outcome at the trial tells us that something has gone badly wrong with the judgment,\u201d the barrister continued.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo an extent that would be uncertain even to someone who is an expert in the breeding of falcons, the judgment implies that, for much of the year, the appellants must keep quiet and refrain from positioning things in the air.<\/p>\n
\u201cA wide range of perfectly normal uses of the land would be unlawful \u2013 or, at least, risk litigation. The utility of the land, and therefore its value, would have been greatly reduced.<\/p>\n
\u201cRaptors of Penwith would have succeeded in \u2018appropriating\u2019 Upper Cot Estate\u2019s land as a buffer to protect its sensitive business.\u201d<\/p>\n
But for the brothers and their business, Jonathan Seitler KC said operation of the scaffolding business, including the operation of a 10m truck-mounted crane which posed a \u201cvisual threat\u201d to the birds, was not \u201ca common or ordinary use\u201d of the land.<\/p>\n
There had also been \u201cexcessive noise\u201d created by the operation of diggers and JCB excavators and by the unloading and loading of granite from a steel trailer.<\/p>\n
And he said that, just because the falcons were \u201csensitive to excessive noise and visual disturbances,\u201d it did not mean bird-keeping there amounted to a \u201cspecial use\u201d of the land.<\/p>\n
Assessment of the noise and visual disturbances also had to be done in the context of the rural area, in which the judge found as a fact that the siting of an aviary was an \u201cordinary\u201d use of land.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe learned judge\u2019s findings of fact regarding the character of the locality informed his assessment of whether the appellants\u2019 activities constituted a nuisance,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He said there could not be any \u201csensible dispute\u201d that the nuisances amounted to \u201csubstantial interference\u201d with the aviary, including scaffolding poles being dropped onto each other from 10m and by granite being worked on, causing \u201cthe entire aviary to vibrate\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese activities would have amounted to a substantial interference in the case of general livestock \u2013 for example, cows during calving \u2013 had ROP put its land to these more \u2018ordinary\u2019 or \u2018usual\u2019 purposes.<\/p>\n
\u201cSimply complaining that ROP\u2019s use of its land is for a \u2018sensitive\u2019 purpose does not grant the appellants immunity from liability in private nuisance so that they are free to generate excessive noise and vibrations adversely affecting the use of the land without any regard for the harm caused.<\/p>\n
\u201cFundamentally, the appellants\u2019 case is contrary to the balance between neighbours\u2019 opposing interests in the use of their respective land which the law aspires to strike.\u201d<\/p>\n
Following a two-day hearing in London, the appeal judges reserved their decision on the appeal until a later date.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":446763,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[96,391,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-446762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-tv","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446762\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}