Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world
Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email
Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email
A former reality television star has lost a £500,000 Appeal Court battle with two bird-breeding brothers, following a ruling that his “negligence” led to the deaths of three of their prize falcons.
Barnes Thomas, 40, appeared on Bear Grylls’ survival skills show The Island in 2018, before he made the move from a London art dealer to a farmer in the picturesque Cornish hamlet of St Just.
However, Mr Thomas, who once described himself as potentially “the most hated man” in his village, soon found himself embroiled in a “bitter” dispute with neighbours Martin Nicholas, 43, and Scott Nicholas, 45.
The Nicholas brothers, who operate their racing falcon breeding business, Raptors of Penwith Ltd, adjacent to Mr Thomas’s land, accused him of causing the deaths of their valuable birds.
They alleged that noisy building work next door had scared the falcons to death.
Among the deceased birds was a race-winner valued at £150,000 alone.
The Nicholas brothers own a falcon breeding business called Raptors of Penwith Ltd (Supplied by Champion News)
The brothers, through their company, pursued legal action. The High Court in Bristol subsequently ordered Mr Thomas and his company, Upper Cot Estate Limited, to pay approximately £500,000 in compensation and costs.
Mr Thomas appealed the decision, arguing it was “unfair” to hold him responsible for the stress-induced deaths of the “incredibly sensitive” birds of prey.
However, his challenge was dismissed by the Court of Appeal, which upheld the original ruling and the substantial financial penalty.
“This appeal is another chapter in this long-running saga, which has consumed a great deal of time and money for both sets of litigants,” said appeal judge, Lady Justice Whipple, in her judgment.
Mr Thomas is a former art dealer who appeared on The Island in 2018, later describing it as the “worst experience of my entire life” after packing a velvet coat, sleeping in an ants’ nest and accidentally burning his socks over a fire.
Having grown up on a cattle farm, he later set himself up as a farmer in his own right on the edge of the idyllic Cornish village of St Just, close to Land’s End.
But he soon found himself at war with his neighbours, falcon-breeding brothers Martin and Scott Nicholas, over claims his noisy building work caused the death of three birds.
The Nicholas brothers run their raptor business on adjoining land, breeding gyr and peregrine falcons, which they sell to be used in falcon races in Dubai.
An aerial image showing the location of the dispute between Barnes Thomas and falcon breeding brothers Scott and Martin Nicholas (Supplied by Champion News)
After finding that work on Mr Thomas’ land had caused three gyr falcons’ death, a judge in April 2025 ordered him to pay his neighbours’ company, Raptors of Penwith Ltd, about £300,000 in compensation and interest, and more than £180,000 towards the breeders’ lawyers’ bills, on top of his own court costs.
Giving judgment following a nine-day High Court trial in 2025, Judge Jonathan Russen KC said the “bitter” row which erupted between the three had “acquired real momentum…over a relatively short space of time”.
Mr Thomas had “proved to be a controversial neighbour,” creating a lake on his land and temporarily removing a stile on a public footpath, causing “opposition within the wider neighbourhood”.
Mr Thomas and his neighbours, whose aviary is next to his company’s land, ended up in court after they claimed that noisy work on a barn and that related to his scaffolding business had effectively scared three valuable birds to death.
The brothers sued for nuisance and negligence, arguing that noisy work on Mr Thomas’ land 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.
For three days, a JCB bucket had been raised in the birds’ line of sight, which Scott Nicholas said had caused them to “go mental at the sight of this alien object”.
Through their company, they claimed the acts breached a duty of care “not to cause or permit the falcons to suffer excessive noise or visual threats, in particular during the breeding season”.
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.
Martin Nicholas (Supplied by Champion News)
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 “noise upsetting the birds.”
“These activities, related to the building of the barn, cannot be said to be outside the ordinary and common use of agricultural land – but they were carried out without proper consideration of Raptors of Penwith’s breeding season,” he said.
In relation to the raising of the digger bucket, he added: “For the purpose of on-site inspection by an engineer, the bucket was raised.
“With 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.
“Placing the digger on the birds’ line of sight on 7 April, 2022, was entirely at odds with ensuring that no undue inconvenience was caused to Raptors of Penwith.”
The judge found that three gyr falcons died as a result of “stress created by the acts of nuisance” and awarded compensation in relation to them.
Appealing to three senior judges at the Court of Appeal, Mr Thomas’ barrister Tom Weekes KC argued in February that Judge Russen had got his judgment completely wrong.
He said Mr Thomas’ use of the land to erect a barn and store materials for his scaffolding business were all “common and ordinary use of land,” while the brothers’ use of their land was for a “particularly sensitive trade.”
It would be “unfair” if the brothers’ bird-breeding next door would be allowed to limit his use of his own property – “so as to effectively appropriate the neighbour’s land as a buffer for the protection of the sensitive trade”.
The Nicholas brothers run their raptor business on adjoining land in St Just, Cornwall (Supplied by Champion News)
He likened it to London Zoo moving its giraffes to residential Kilburn, in north London, and then suing locals if they weren’t quiet during breeding times, or an observatory moving to a village and telling residents to turn their lights off at night.
“The learned judge should have dismissed ROP’s nuisance claim on a straightforward application of the common law principle that ‘a man cannot increase the liabilities of his neighbour by applying his own property to special uses, whether for business or pleasure’,” he said.
In their judgment on the appeal, three judges gave split decisions, with Lady Justice Whipple saying Mr Thomas and his company were liable in nuisance and negligence, Lord Justice Nugee saying that they were liable in negligence only, while Lord Justice Moylan found them not liable at all – with the result that they remain liable in negligence, and their appeal was dismissed.
“Parking a digger on one’s own land is a perfectly ordinary thing to do,” said Lord Justice Nugee.
“But the judge found that it did not need to be left next to the aviary: this was not the only place that it could have been towed for the purposes of an engineer’s visit; and even if it had been, it should not have been left there with its bucket raised.
“In other words, leaving it in that place with the bucket raised was not necessary for the defendants’ purposes and was not ‘conveniently’ done, in the sense that all reasonable steps had been taken to ensure that no undue inconvenience was caused to their neighbours.
“It was, in the judge’s words, ‘entirely at odds with ensuring that no undue inconvenience was caused to Raptors of Penwith’.”
Agreeing with Lord Justice Nugee’s finding of liability for negligence, Lady Justice Whipple said Mr Thomas and his company “should not be able to act with complete disregard for the interests of their neighbours in the way they have done”.
She added: “In my view, this dispute was settled by the judge on 8 April 2024. He rejected the defendants’ evidence of fact and expert opinion.
“He found that the claimants were using their land, through the business of ROP, in a way that was common and ordinary, that the defendants had acted in a way which had substantially interfered with that use through lack of care and that ROP had suffered loss and damage as a result.”
Lord Justice Moylan said he would have not found any liability for negligence or nuisance, but due to the other judges’ decisions, the appeal was dismissed.
