[Good guy]

I thought I'd post these pictures as examples of what NOT to do! Both of these once lovely birches are located in Letterkenny.

[tagwex]

Amateurs!

[medieval knievel]

inthe first image, what would have been the best practice? take it completely down to a stump?

[Good guy]

Mature birches can't really be pruned successfully, so the answer is, yes.

I have removed a few lower branches to 'raise the crown', letting in more light to ground level and improving the shape, but that is all.

There is an awful lot of tree-butchery going on around the country and my language, regarding the perpetrators of these arboreal outrages, would probably not be acceptable to the moderators of the website. I agree with Tagwex, but to the Nth degree!

[tippben]

In the first example, if the lower growth were ruthlessly pruned out, it MIGHT make pollards. What you'd do with the poles though, I don't know. The second example is an absolute disaster. Best to be hoped for there is that it lives another ten years and you get thicker firewood. Both are classic examples of overexhuberance: planting two trees where there was barely space for one, thinking "Oh we can always prune it". The only possible way to have pruned them would've been a 25% reduction, from the outside in, every branch and twig. An expensive job, requiring a cherrypicker or scissor lift.

[Good guy]

Another alternative might be to ring-bark the stump to kill it and then grow some interesting climber over it. The gradually decomposing stump would be a terrific wildlife resource.

[medieval knievel]

i've seen a massive coppiced birch once - i think it was bigger than the known champion tree record for ireland.
we have a 50 foot birch at the end of our garden; i don't think the neighbours mind it, we're in a suburban area.