Day before yesterday my wife witnessed a murder in the orchard between the house we are camping in and the one 50 yards away that has wifi (we sit in an apartment connected to the house to do our communicating, or when that's occupied, as now, in the car on the hard parking nearby).
She said she had seen two large crows attacking another bird. Walking through the orchard half an hour later I passed a pigeon that was all there apart from having no head and being partly turned inside out. During the rest of the day cats, and no doubt the crows, returned to the corpse and removed bits of it. By the end of the day there were just a few feathers and a brown stain on the slippery brick path.
Later I saw the miscreants, magnificent in appearance but deeply unpleasant. They reminded me in their strutting, cock-of-the-walk demeanour and arrogant, nasty expressions of the young Kray twins in expensive new black whistles got for nothing from some hapless East End tailor. For 24 hours I was toying with the idea of borrowing a shooter and putting them down. I was worried about the small birds in the garden, the ones that sing.
But yesterday I decided to reprieve them for the time being. They are a pair of young ravens I think, born last spring. I saw them both in the orchard again with their (greying, smaller, faded) mother who may have been murmuring provocatively: now calm down boys, don't upset people... The thing that made me let them off was the sight of a greater spotted woodpecker and three blue tits eating nuts unmolested from one of those thingies people hang up.
Mind you if they messed with a woodpecker they might learn that beaks and neck muscles don't have to be big to do damage.
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Well done AC, I knew you had a soft heart under that sometimes grumpy facade!
Just sit back and let nature look after itself, man should never interfere.
Pat
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Thank you Pat, but I fear you may be idealising me. I have assassinated many a pheasant in my time, although only one deer.
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That's it....you've just fallen off that pedestal now. That is unless you assassinated them to eat?
Pat
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Get them during the winter and the maggies, they'll wreak havoc among the nests of the songbirds if you don't.
Note how the little birds sing their hearts out after, it's as if they know.
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String the murderers up from the boughs of the trees as a reminder to the others.
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>> they'll wreak havoc among the nests of the songbirds if you don't.
That's a good point gb. I will be watching them and thinking about it. Perhaps they will catch my malevolent vibe and move elsewhere. It isn't a job I fancy really.
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It isn't a job I fancy
>> really.
I get no pleasure from it either, but the change in the locality's songbird population leaves me in no doubt of it's justification...your role as The Sussex Squire comes with certain responsibilities too, maybe cultivating an evil aura will suffice.
I imagine Z was being his mishevious self with his string 'em up as a warning to others suggestion, haven't seen that done for many years probably since i was a boy...though it could serve as a catalyst for provoking a good punch up between the crows and maggies, it proves a good time for potting a few whilst they are engaged in turf wars..;)
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>> haven't seen that done for many years probably since i was a boy...
I have, in East Anglia on a big estate we used to go for walks on. Seventies or eighties. Big-time pheasant country for driven birds (something I have never done - I am rough only). There was a really big gamekeeper's larder on a fence in the middle of nowhere, jays, crows, magpies, stoats and weasels, and a couple of foxes all green and rotting with age.
Dunno about the scavenger birds and small predators, but it put the fear of God into me. Well, not quite, but they are a sinister institution. A bit like pirates hanging rotting in chains at execution dock...
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You do realise you only 'hear' more song birds because it's what you want to hear to ease your conscience, GB?
Pat
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.. unless you assassinated them to eat?
Well, I don't just kill things out of random devilry these days although before 1955 or so I might have done sometimes.
We hit a fallow stag with at least eight points, perhaps ten, on a dark twisting road near here this evening. I braked hard, it turned away, I took my foot off and the silly beast turned back into the side of the car. There was quite a thump and it may well have been knocked off its feet, but they are sinewy creatures and my guess is that it is all right, but a bit bruised. We didn't stop.
I was afraid those antlers might have gouged the paint but they didn't. No serious marks of any sort, in bad light at a garage anyway. We will see tomorrow.
Red in tooth and claw, eh? It's nice to be part of nature.
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Sparrowhawk got lucky in our garden today. Came over the house like a Hellfire missile and took a Goldfinch off the feeder.
He pinned it to the ground for a couple of minutes before flying off with it still alive.
Kevin...
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Saw similar in our garden Kevin. Was gazing idly out of the window watching a robin feeding on the lawn when a blur came over the hedge, there was a scattering of feathers and sparrowhawk flew off with said robin. Felt sorry for robin, a regular visitor to garden especially when I'm doing a it of digging and it perched a few feet away before picking up various insects and worms just iches away from me, but couldn't help admiring the speed and sheer efficiency of that killing machine sparrowhawk. Often see it in our garden trees now and all the other birds set off a fearful squawking before disapppearing rapidly!
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...perched a few feet away...
All robins seem to have this trait of following humans around the garden.
One would regularly land outside the caravan to watch me unload the CC3.
It got so close a couple of times I found myself shooing it away for fear of treading on it.
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talking to a life long member of the pidgeon fanciers the other week he said while all these sparrow hawks and red kites and all the other buzzards that frequent our motorways and fields are left untouched by the arch enemy the farmer and his friends then your little songbirds are doomed to no existence
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I hardly think we are plagued by gazzilions of red kits or sparra awks. Pidgin fanciers are queer folks anyhow, don't listen to them.
Last edited by: Zero on Sun 31 Oct 10 at 19:40
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if it wasnt for the fact that you can drive down any dual cabbageway and not see a hawk of some description i would agree with you
go back 30 years and a hawk was a rare pleasureable sighting to behold
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At least they poo less than pigeons.
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Generally birds of prey are looking for a meal not a snack, a nest of eggs or fledglings are not their normal food source, the relatively few adults taken by them shouldn't be a problem.
Unlike Corvids on the other hand which stalk the busy parents find the nest and pick it clean wiping out the results of a years breeding.
The ones i don't get my neighbour does.;)
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"Unlike Corvids on the other hand which stalk the busy parents find the nest and pick it clean wiping out the results of a years breeding."
Nearly all songbirds lay more than one clutch of eggs in a season and lay more than one egg. A blackbird for instance may lay 3 clutches of eggs in a season and each clutch can number form 3 to 5 eggs. In their lifetime a pair of blackbirds can easily lay 30-40 eggs, of which only two need to reach breeding age to perpetuate the population.
Songbirds are thus easily able to shrug of predation by birds of prey and crows. If you really want to help songbirds survive provide some suitable habitat in your garden and put our some bird feeders in winter.
You might enjoy shooting crows but it won't help the songbirds
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>At least they poo less than pigeons.
Elephants poo less than pigeons.
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Ah yes, now let's see. There are approximately 60,000 buzzards, 40,000 sparrow hawks and 4,000 red kites in the UK according to the RSPB.
There are 61 million people and and estimated 8 million cats.
It is obviously the birds of prey that are responsible for the decline in number of some song birds. Nothing to do with destructions of habitat by man both in the countryside and the suburbs. Nothing to do with predations by domestic pets.
Lets kill all the birds of prey
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>> while all these sparrow hawks and red kites and all the other buzzards that frequent
>> our motorways and fields are left untouched by the arch enemy the farmer and his
>> friends then your little songbirds are doomed to no existence
>>
Raptors and songbirds managed to co-exist long before farmers had guns.
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im just a messenger
please dont shoot me :-(
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We'll hunt you down with the aid of some falconry skills...
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Proper birds of prey, eagles, kites, owls and so on - aren't a problem obviously.
I have a very grand friend who shot an owl once by mistake.
I am told the RSPB quite likes people shooting magpies and ravens, although it can't come right out and say so.
I don't fancy shooting these damn birds at all. I just think it may be a good idea.
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For the views of RSPB on the effect of predation by magpies on songbirds see:
www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/m/magpie/effect_on_songbirds.aspx
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...views of the RSPB on predation by magpies...
Oh, dear, gb won't like this.
The RSPB-sponsored research found: "Songbird numbers were no different in places where there were many magpies or sparrowhawks from where there are few."
Seems habit and food are the overwhelmingly important factors.
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It also seems from the report that the biggest killer of songbirds is man.
Pat
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>> gb won't like this.
Why should he mind? You have to remember that the RSPB depends on contributions from bunny-hugging sentimentalists for some of its income at least. Any suggestion in its published bumf that the local ecological balance can be slightly tweaked in a useful, or anyway pleasant, direction by the simple expedient of wasting some nasty crows with a 12 bore might well be counter-productive and lead to endless trouble on the funding and PR fronts.
Nevertheless I am given to understand that privately its front-line sanctuary rangers are more than willing to turn a blind eye to corvid murder. I don't know for sure that it's true, but it makes sense to me.
Saw the Kray twins again this midday strutting their stuff among the windfalls, again ignoring the small birds nearby. I don't think they are ravens after all but carrion crows. They are very fine.
I may well decide not to murder them. I haven't decided yet but if I don't do it it will be out of laziness really, and squeamishness. If garden songbirds are a bit thin next year I will know I was wrong.
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...gb won't like this...Why should he mind?...
He won't like it in the sense he believes the opposite - that magpies do have a significant impact on songbird numbers.
Instinctively, I agree, but research by the British Ornithological Trust should have some authority.
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>> with the aid of some falconry skills...
And one of these new 25 quid lighter-gas-fuelled cutting torches BB... have you got one yet?
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>>I just think it may be a good idea<<
Anything can be justified as a good idea if it brings pleasure to some people.
Pat
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RSPB and Songbird Survival Trust are at loggerheads over this Magpie culpability, depends who you believe, i agree with AC about reasons for the former's public attitude.
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I repeat my post above GB :)
Pat
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GB, It seems to me that your argument is 100% the wrong way round. It is those of a sentimental and unscientific viewpoint who talk of "murdering" magpies and see songbirds as innocent victims of evil crows and which somehow need to be delivered to justice. Your choice of the word "culpability" somehow implying blame and wrongdoing on the part of these creatures seems to put you in the non scientific-camp.
All scientific and impartial evidence support the view that the decline in the songbird population, and indeed that of virtually every endangered species is down to destruction of habitat and food supply. No creature ever goes extinct as a result of predation by it natural enemy with which it has co-evolved over time.
You may enjoy shooting crows for whatever reasons but at the end of the day it won't make any difference to the overall songbird population or indeed the crow population and it cannot therefore be justified on that basis. You will simply find more corvids move in from adjacent areas to take advantage of the food supply made available to them.
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Bet his Mum wouldn't let him have an air gun when he was little:)
Pat
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CGN and Pat: gordonbennet has said he doesn't take any pleasure in shooting crows, and I believe him. Presumably though you think I too am just itching to waste the creatures although I have said clearly twice that I really don't fancy doing it and probably won't.
Perhaps you imagine that he (and I) think we can reverse the overall decline in the songbird population by interfering in this way. You don't seem to have registered that I (and I think gb) are calculating on a purely local level: that fewer magpies and crows in a large country garden may well mean more small and attractive songbirds in the immediate area.
I can't speak for gb of course but I myself have no moral feelings about crows. They are what they are. But it doesn't seem to me especially bad to cull a few of them if it will mean more agreeable little tweeters next year. It's an aesthetic motive, not a sentimental one.
Of course it is a shameless interference with the 'natural order'. So what? That's something we humans have been doing without a second thought for, er, some considerable time.
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>>So what? That's something we humans have been doing without a second thought for, er, some considerable time. <<
OK, so tell me where doing this has improved anything?
Pat
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>> OK, so tell me where doing this has improved anything?
It's made the landscape we know and love Pat. It's kept us fed (by the same token) and prosperous enough to, for example, actually bother to feel concern for other human categories and even brute beasts in the fields.
'Nature' means different things to different people. There isn't actually a single definition that will satisfy everyone. How can there be, when we are inside it and part of it, as much part of it as the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy?
But we can all see that a very large part of what we think of as nature would be very different if we hadn't had this symbiotic relationship with it for countless millennia.
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The fear I have is that more and more we are destroying that symbiotic relationship.
Pat
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I had given up on this thread because the two sides will never agree and strange unjust assumptions of an individual's reasons and nature are not helpful.
As AC says above i shall state again for the hard of hearing in the stalls...i don't like killing these birds, it doesn't bother me if i'm believed but appreciate the fact that AC does.
We feed songbirds quite well with various different foods from beginning October through to June, it makes our area attractive to many of the birds in decline and they have flourished and continue to do so.
I can only try my best to help the situation in my home area as i see it, where i work there are woods surrounding on all sides and apart from Woodpeckers there are no songbirds at all, not heard nor seen, but hundreds of Corvids.
That was the situation here before i decided to intervene.
I believe much of the Corvid's success is caused by humans, between dropped edible rubbish and road kill these corvids have an all year round staple diet and then top up with their natural menu of eggs and fledglings when the season comes round.
Without humans causing the Corvid food surplus i don't think they would be quite so prolific, and many would perish in winter...as it is they only have to nip into the town early morning to clean up the food dropped passed and vomited by apparent humans.
Therefore IMO the unnaturally high numbers of Corvids causes much higher predation of smaller birds than would be the natural case.
As AC rightly observes i'm only doing my bit where we live, when i'm dust it may well revert to as was before i came.
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here here gb
ive spent more on goodies for suppressed little tweeties these last two years over all the the other years of my life
i love to hear birdsong too as britain becomes concreted and very few people understand how beautiful birds trees and bushes are
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>>i love to hear birdsong too
I never used to appreciate it until I realised the grave was creeping closer............
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>> i love to hear birdsong too
Yes, I do too, much more than when I was young. Some have relatively brief warning calls and the like, but song-thrushes, nightingales and best of all skylarks put out real music (although they probably don't see it quite like that). Lark song has the virtuosity and much of the form of the genius alto sax player Charlie Parker - nicknamed the Yardbird - with whom I share a birthday.
Nightingales are a bit lugubrious for my taste. But anyway they are now extremely rare, as are thrushes, and skylarks are much thinner on the ground than they were. 20 or 30 years ago there were plenty of all three in West Sussex. I'm afraid modern farming has reduced their numbers.
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>> song-thrushes, nightingales and best of all skylarks
What made me leave blackbirds off the list of serious avian musicians I wonder?
Could it have been some sort of unconscious racist reaction based on an accident of, er, plumage colour?
Oh deary me...
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The RSPB seems to like both sides of the fence.
On the one hand they commission a study that "found no evidence that increased numbers of magpies have caused declines in songbirds.."
Mmm "found no evidence", where have I heard that before?
On the other "The RSPB is seeking to develop non-lethal methods of controlling corvid predation on its reserves."
www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/m/magpie/legal_control_methods.aspx
Why would they want to control corvid predation if it has no effect?
My own observations tell me that the corvid (and pigeon) population has increased dramatically over the last five years or so where I live.
Magpies are now mobbing and attacking other birds in our garden just for the fun of it. Blackbirds and Thrushes seem to take the brunt of it but anything is fair game including Eric, the large Heron who visits us now and again to raid a neighbours fishpond.
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>> seeking to develop non-lethal methods of controlling corvid predation on its reserves."
Napalm. That'll do the trick.
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You learn somthing every day - I hadn't got a clue what a Corvid was and had to look it up:
www.corvidaid.org/
I like the phrase "it tweets, only a little louder!"...
I hadn't realised that they killed other birds, either, the ones I'd seen were always taking apart roadkill... though according to that site they only do it if desperate for food...
The way our cat behaves I'd have thought the cat population would cause more problems than them... though she's already killed one of those "rats with wings"... sorry, grey pidgeon... We see some horrible examples of them in Brum, perhaps we should get the Corvid population to move into the city centres...
www.forumspile.com/owned/Owned-Pidgeon.jpg
Last edited by: hobby on Wed 3 Nov 10 at 16:47
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>>but hundreds of Corvids.
Are you sure that these are carrion crows? If you see large numbers of them they will be rooks. Most of the year they will just be pecking around in the fields. Carrion crows usually walk around in pairs.
There's a lot of bird favouritism on here. I happen to like carrion crows, ravens, rooks and jackdaws. They are very intelligent birds. I notice that the two strutters AC mentions were feeding on a pidgeon. Good luck to them I say. We're not exactly short of them, and they can take as many collared doves as they want, bunch of cooing, corpulating flying rats. A sparrow hawk took one right in front of me in the garden last year, I remained very still and watched as it proceeded to pluck the thing to bits while it was still struggling and eat it a few feet away from me, then take the rest of the carcass to a quieter place across the fields. A ruthless predator.
Jackdaws are beautiful birds close up, a lovely sheen on their feathers, and very defined eyes that seem to sum you up as they look at you. Same with all corvids. No bird reminds me more of the way a T Rex might have walked as a carrion crow, you just have to imagine one scaled up in size. Rooks are just plain ugly, but I still like their primordial look, I can't imagine it's changed much over the years. And if you want to see a spectacle, stand in the path of the rooks (usually accompanied by jackdaws) evening flyover to their roosts, just before the sun goes down. Just incredible, you can hear the rush of wings as they fly overhead in a long line that can last for minutes.
Last edited by: corax on Wed 3 Nov 10 at 18:21
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Mine are carrion crows. They're big, smart, young and gangsterish. They are much bigger than rooks.
I agree that a pigeon - even a country pigeon, not a London skyrat - is neither here nor there, or a squirrel either. But without knowing a lot about their habits I fear for hedge-built nests full of eggs or small birds next spring. Perhaps they won't bother, I dunno.
Saw a large flock of rooks mobbing a grey heron once from my sitting room in Ladbroke Grove. They made a lot of fuss and the terrified heron flew past below third-floor window height, in the general direction of Holland Park which it had been unwise to leave in the first place.
I was once present at the filming of a long TV interview in Essex. The sound recording kept having to be stopped, for two reasons: trains passing twenty yards away every two to five minutes, and the rookery in the nearby trees which would break out in randomly-spaced storms of cawing.
The sound and camera techies in the crew took the trains in their stride, but directed oaths and looks of pure hatred at the rooks. Had me in fits of laughter.
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>> and the rookery in the nearby trees which would break
>> out in randomly-spaced storms of cawing.
Probably did it on purpose. I wouldn't put it past them :-)
I was skulking around some trees next to a fence at work and one of a pair of carrion crows appeared just above my head and cawed menacingly at me. I though 'this is unusual, what have I done to upset it?' then I noticed some movement through the fence and it was a young juvenile crow hopping around in the undergrowth. Ahh, now I see, and I made myself scarce. They really can be quite intimidating when they're up close and personal.
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And, corax, discussing the whole corvid issue with two cousins-in-law in the pub the other night, it turned out that in their fifties they are still both wrangling over the ownership of a jackdaw they knew when they were boys.
One told a story about what may have been another jackdaw (I can remember yet another that belonged to his son 20 years ago). I suppose he would have been 16 or 17 at the time. He had a jackdaw with an injured wing and was trying to take it from Oxford to Sussex or vice versa. He put it in a secure box with holes so it could breathe and so on, and set off on the first leg of the journey. Had to change at Didcot or somewhere of the sort.
All the way the bird banged around and fluttered and squawked in its box to the disapproval of other passengers. At Didcot (or wherever) he got out onto the platform. The bird squawked and fluttered furiously and in the end he thought, right, it really hates being captive, wants to be free, I'll let it go. So he opened the box, it surged out and rushed off down the platform dragging its gammy wing.
At that moment a huge express train, steam perhaps in those days, thundered through the station at 90 or so. At the sight and thunder of it, the jackdaw's eyes doubled in size, its beak fell open, it rocked back on its heels in horror, then turned and fled back into the box.
Not sure quite how true it is, but I do like it.
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The monotonous cooing of the the collared dove is the sound that makers of period films and costume dramas dread.
Unknown in the UK until the 1950s its presence on the soundtrack is sure to bring protests from those who care about these things.
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>> The monotonous cooing of the the collared dove
Yes, monotonous is the word, and unrelenting come the warmer months. Heck, it makes even a wood pigeon sound interesting. Compare it to a dunnock, wee brown jobbie it may be, but try to emulate that song, fantastic.
>> Unknown in the UK until the 1950s
I don't remember seeing any when I was younger, or maybe I just wasn't interested back then. Their numbers seem to increase every year.
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In Brittany a month or so back, saw a few slim elegant grey doves of a sort I didn't recognise. Very pretty birds.
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Collared doves were quite rare in England until comparitively recently and unknown before the mid fifties. They originate in Southern Asia but have now spread throughout Europe, Asia, China, the Caribbean and now have a good foothold in the Southern US .
Truly a bird bent on world domination!
Apart from their mind numbing call I think that they are quite attractive birds.
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>> Apart from their mind numbing call I think that they are quite attractive birds.
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The one Snowy caught was, but it was a countryside-living version and so quite well fed with "proper" food... but the ones you see in town and city centres are 'orrible looking things, usually without their full quota of legs and just a stump as well as having a strange colour scheme... The dangers of city life, eh!
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The city birds are in fact a different species. They are a feral version of the domestic pigeon which in turn is a domesticated version the the native Rock Dove. As their name suggests their natural nest sites habitat are in rocky areas and are now quite rare in their natural habitat.
The collared dove is a newer arrival and is slightly smaller than the domestic or feral pigeon.
www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/c/collareddove/index.aspx
www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/r/rockdove/index.aspx
Some city birds are indeed horribly deformed. Not sure whether this is in-breeding, disease, or accidental damage but as you say the price of city living!
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>> Are you sure that these are carrion crows? If you see large numbers of them
>> they will be rooks.
It was just a general term to cover the family of birds, it's mainly Magpies but as usual there are a good number of Crows and others vying for territory.
The whole area is surrounded by miles of woods, during late spring and summer and now the absence of any songbirds would be obvious to anyone.
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Murder in the orchard -slasher movie for twitchers - Pat
