The RSPB is employing people to kill birds and foxes and hide it from the public, The Telegraph can reveal.

The charity has been seeking contractors to shoot foxes and catch crows using controversial traps which use live birds as bait and instructing that it must be done “away from public view”.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has even said that in “exceptional circumstances” it will allow wounded foxes to be hunted using dogs.

Lord Botham has said that methods used by the “eco-left charity, which constantly chastises countryside folk for what they do” shows the need to “move away from the Disney view of the countryside in which we pretend that tough choices on controlling predators can be avoided”.

The RSPB has regularly clashed with shooting and countryside organisations over the management of predators and has been accused of unfairly accusing gamekeepers of wrongdoing.

The instructions have emerged as part of a tender for “an appropriately qualified and experienced contractor to undertake the lethal control of foxes and crows” in order to protect curlews, which are ground-nesting birds.

The documents, seen by The Telegraph, say that the contractor is expected to “provide and to run Larsen traps, away from public view, to remove territorial crows that have learned behaviours to target curlew eggs and chicks”.