Silly Bird season

[The Artilleryman]

The Blackbird chicks have just fledged and it's chaos around the bungalow, the same one flew into my office widow twice within 10 minutes, I've just filled the seed feeders and then had to shoo one of the chicks out of the garage/workshop (sealed container so, it's got no chance of an easy feed - even less as I'm waiting for tomorrows courier before feeding the birds in the morning).

Goldfinches just look at me as I walk over to the ****** seed feeder, as if to say "what do you want?"

 

[tom2207]

still they manage to fly ,,, you cant . ... keep feeding them and be envious.



mind you , theres a lot less chance that you will get sucked into a jet engine than they will,,, so take pity , and keep feeding them

 

[Chillitt]

The blackbirds seem a lot more stupid than normal here too. Last week one got stuck in a tree...

 

[tom2207]

The blackbirds seem a lot more stupid than normal here too. Last week one got stuck in a tree...

you just need to tie a cat to a stick and wave it at the bird ,, that will scare it down. hth

 

[pedrobedro]

We've had a bumper crop of house sparrows this year and they insist on going into the 8x6 greenhouse and getting disoriented trying to find the way back out. Most we had in was 3 at a time, they do find an exit as the door or the auto vent is left open.

 

[galooph]

Had a young Goldfinch smack hard into the window. Thought it looked dead, but left it for a while just in case it was only stunned. Looked out of the window a while later, only to see a Magpie pick it up and fly off! Saved me a job cleaning it up

 

[brightspark]

Had a young Goldfinch smack hard into the window. Thought it looked dead, but left it for a while just in case it was only stunned. Looked out of the window a while later, only to see a Magpie pick it up and fly off! Saved me a job cleaning it up

the other year a magpie chased a young blackie across the drive and it just escaped in to my garage between a gap in the door somehow the magpie met its maker

 

[pedrobedro]

the other year a magpie chased a young blackie across the drive and it just escaped in to my garage between a gap in the door somehow the magpie met its maker

Usually involves something .22 calibre round here. We were overrun with them a few months ago.

 

[brightspark]

some use larson traps and lead

 

[Melvyn Best]

Had blackbirds nesting in a tree in next doors garden last year until a magpie took the chicks .

 

[awemawson]

We've been plagued with rooks and crows to the extent that they are literally eating more chicken feed than the chicken and egg yield has dropped off.
Close to the chicken run is an oak tree and it was absolutely crawling with them. Now I don't have a gun myself but a visiting friend on Sunday brought his 12 bore - he thought I was exaggerating saying hundreds, but putting the first shot into the tree AT LEAST 200 flew off in a great swirling black cloud.
I followed up with a rope of 12 crow scarer bangers that go off at 30 minute intervals and for the last few days the vast bulk of them have gone. No doubt they will eventually return . . . .

. . . . anyone fancy crow pie.

(Another friend suggested a cat-a-pult. I said forget the pult and just bring the cat )

 

[Tangledfeet]

One of my wife's hobbies is feeding and observing the birds in the corner of garden outside her window, she works from home so makes a nice distraction for her. A family of woodpeckers, with youngsters, are regularly visitors, blackbirds, red squirrels - and we have swallows nesting above the LED PIR lamp above the workshop door. One by-product of this availability of food is rats... and its an area of the garden the whippets don't get into unfortunately! Sadly she made me sell her Dad's old air rifle...

She's put sticky notes in most of the windows as it does seem to prevent birds flying into them... does make us all look a bit 'special' though!

 

[Edward Teach]

I rescued a swift from inside my fathers workshop a week or so ago,
They regularly fly in and out of the workshop if you are quiet,
This particular swift, we startled, when walking back in,
It flew into one of the windows, panicking, then lay in a gap beside the bench worktop,
I quickly scooped it up, took it outside, and let it go asap, before any shock set in, (no photo)
It flew off, hopefully quite happily.

Two or three pairs, nest in one of the redundant stables every year,
Flying in through one or the other, of the two top opening windows,
The stable doors are kept shut, to keep the Magpie's out, they pull the young ones out of the nests
How the Swifts negotiate flying in through the small open window does amaze me.

 

[Blobber]

Weve a good selection of birds around here, luckily weve had none down the chimney this year and yes it has a cowl but they still manage it!

Loads of pigeons though, horrible things with turds like a flying elephant, going to be a bit of lead action this weekend though.....

 

[TechnicAl]

Weve got loads of Blackbirds and Wrens........one small conifer had 3 wrens nests in it and each one had 3 chicks........dog got to one blackbird nest and brought me 3 dead chicks......I cant put any food out because next door decided to get chickens and now there are Rats knocking about.......Ive bought traps but they are too smart to get caught........take all the bait except the bit inside the trap........Ive spent hours at the bedroom window with the air rifle.......i keep missing them or maybe hitting but not killing them.....only see one at a time though....suspect theres more than one though.

 

[8ob]

A machine driver I knew rescued and reared a Blackbird chick, it lived on the roof of his house. He was working some twenty five miles away at the time and when he got to work the bird would be there already sat on top of his JCB, used to join in at tea breaks with the lads. Get in his truck to go home and there was the bird already sat on the roof when he got there, it stayed around for a few years. I think he was a bit disappointed when it eventually disappeared.

Bob