Towcester man jailed for £70,000 falcon egg smuggling

Towcester man Jeffrey Lendrum, 48, from York Close in Towcester, is starting a 30 month sentence in prison after being found in possession of 14 peregrine falcon eggs when he was detained on 3 May.

Lendrum was arrested at Birmingham Airport as he waited for a flight to Dubai, where he was detained after being caught with the eggs, valued at £70,000 on the black market.

An air port cleaner raised the alarm when Lendrum was seen acting suspiciously. The former member of the Rhodesian SAS had wrapped the eggs, which had been stolen from a nest in south Wales, in socks before taping them to his chest to keep them warm.

Abseiled from helicopter

After they were seized by police, 11 of the eggs were successfully hatched and the highly protected chicks released back in to the wild, Warwick Crown Court heard.

Investigators described Lendrum as “the highest level of wildlife criminal” and said the case was one of the most serious of its kind in decades.

Lendrum admitted one count of trying to export the eggs and another of illegally stealing them from a nest on the side of a mountain in Rhondda.

The court heard officers also found thousands of pounds of cash on Lendrum when they arrested him.

At first he claimed they were chicken eggs he had bought at Waitrose before trying to fool police by saying he used them to treat his bad back.

Police subsequently searched one of his properties in Northamptonshire where they discovered equipment for egg hunting, including incubators, a GPS system and walkie-talkies.

Lendrum had previous convictions in Zimbabwe and Canada for stealing rare eggs. He once abseiled off a cliff to reach a nest, while on another occasion he lowered himself from a helicopter in Canada to reach his prize.