A gamekeeper who used live pigeons in cages as bait and laced the carcasses of pheasants with deadly poisons to lure birds of prey yesterday avoided a jail sentence.

George Aitken, 56 - who has managed to keep his job - was ordered to carry out 220 hours of community service after admitting a series of wildlife crime offences.

There had been calls for him to be jailed for his disregard of the Wildlife and Countryside Act. But the sheriff, who said he would have disqualified him from being a gamekeeper if he had the power, explained he was able to impose the alternative to custody because Aitken was a first offender and was not in the best of health.

Investigators were shocked at what they discovered when they staged a raid on the Borders estate where he worked, close to the Southern Upland Way, which is popular with dog walkers.

In an operation last August involving the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the Scottish Executive Environment and Rural Affairs Department and Lothian and Borders Police, a number of banned pesticides and traps were recovered from Blythe Farm near Lauder. Aitken pleaded guilty to a total of eight offences at Selkirk Sheriff Court yesterday while not guilty pleas were accepted to seven charges.

He admitted three charges of being in possession of carbofuran and sodium cyanide.

Aitken also pleaded guilty to two offences of setting in place pheasant carcasses laced with carbosulfan in the open likely to cause injury to wild birds, setting traps using live pigeons as bait, cruelly ill-treating pigeons and causing them unnecessary suffering by using them as a decoy to attract birds of prey and possession of a quantity of cage traps.

Aitken, a gamekeeper for 20 years, committed the offences as part of pest control effort to stop the birds of prey attacking the pheasants on his estate.

Depute fiscal Alasdair Fay said that the police's wildlife crime officer received a tip-off that poisoning was taking place on the estate.

A joint raid took place and a bag containing five dead pheasants laced with pesticides was found in an open barn shed.

Poisoned pheasants were found placed out in the open and two pigeons in home-made cages, one of which was so badly injured it had to be put down. Banned pesticides were also found on Aitken's quad bike.

Defence lawyer Ian Wells said that Aitken was unaware that the pesticides were banned.

Mr Wells added that although his client did not keep good physical health, having asthma and recovering from bowel cancer, he was able to carry out community service.