Ruff - Relationship With Humans

Relationship With Humans

Ruffs were formerly trapped for food in England in large numbers; on one occasion, 2,400 were served at Archbishop Neville's enthronement banquet in 1465. The birds were netted while lekking, sometimes being fattened with bread, milk and seed in holding pens before preparation for the table.

...if expedition is required, sugar is added, which will make them in a fortnight's time a lump of fat: they then sell for two Shillings or half-a-crown a piece… The method of killing them is by cutting off their head with a pair of scissars, the quantity of blood that issues is very great, considering the size of the bird. They are dressed like the Woodcock, with their intestines; and, when killed at the critical time, say the Epicures, are reckoned the most delicious of all morsels.

The heavy toll on breeding birds, together with loss of habitat through drainage and collection by nineteenth-century trophy hunters and egg collectors, meant that the species became almost extinct in England by the 1880s, although recolonisation in small numbers has occurred since 1963. The draining of wetlands from the 1800s onwards in southern Sweden has resulted in the Ruff's disappearance from many areas there, although it remains common in the north of the country. The use of insecticides and draining of wetlands has led to a decrease in the number of Ruff in Denmark since the early 1900s. There are still areas where the Ruff and other wetland birds are hunted legally or otherwise for food. A large-scale example is the capture of more than one million waterbirds (including Ruffs) in a single year from Lake Chilwa in Malawi.

Although this bird eats rice on the wintering grounds, where it can make up nearly 40% of its diet, it takes mainly waste and residues from cropping and threshing, not harvestable grain. It has sometimes been viewed as a pest, but the deeper water and presence of invertebrate prey in the economically important early winter period means that the wader has little effect on crop yield.