Magpie dropped from 2024 Welsh general licences

[enfieldspares]

Well the answer lies in our own hands! Literally. By pen or by keyboard. I've just received my RSPB "Big Garden Birdwatch" through the post. You fill it in and send it off in a freepost envelope in February 2024. Or you can do it online. How many birds seen in your garden in an hour on a date in January 2024. I predict that mine will see that all I've seen is about six magpies. And a comment about no songbirds.

Every survey counts. Tell us what you saw by 23 February.

Submissions are now closed, but there are lots of things you can do while our scientists crunch the numbers.

www.rspb.org.uk

 

[Bo Diddley]

Maybe I phrased it badly.
You guys have been shooting and trapping magpies on sight for close on 200 years.
During that time the population of small birds has fallen, mostly due to habitat loss and pesticides.
Over the last 40 years or so, magpies have invaded the cities and suburbs where they are largely left unmolested.
Has the small bird population in cities declined proportionally in association with the increased magpie population?
If not, why not?
The more I look at what we do, the more convinced I am that we actually make very little difference most of the time and we would be far better off targeting our efforts where they’ll do most good.
For example, where a high population of common predators exists close to a colony of vulnerable species, it makes sense to reduce the odds in favour of the species you are trying to protect because each individual nest represents a sizeable proportion of that years potential population recruitment.
So trap and shoot the predators around the site.
But trying to kill them all you’re just ****inginthewind. There’s simply too many of them in too many places that you can’t touch to have much effect.

When it comes to crows you have allies, sheep and free range poultry farmers, plus cattlemen with feedlots, they’ll see to it that crows stay where they are.

Maybe the Urban magpie population has different feeding habits than the rural population, just like the fox population living on food discarded by humans, I'm sure the magpie does exactly the same, obviously in rural situations they still eat the usual fare of eggs & chicks when available.

I once again shoot a few foxes on a micro patch of farmland at the bottom of my garden, I've observed this piece of land for 40 years, always just an odd Brown hare, three years ago when I got the nod to shoot the foxes I shot 16 the first winter, 7 last winter, and the Brown hares have bounced back, often I can count 20 or more with the thermal at night... surely it's down to trimming up the foxes as the farming practices has remained constant.

 

[JTO]

Protecting predators of any sort in a small country like ours is sheer lunacy and shows a total lack of knowledge of how nature works. Left unchecked predators will eventually remove the vulnerable species below them.

For a moment, I thought I was on the immigrant thread!

 

[Bo Diddley]

For a moment, I thought I was on the immigrant thread!

Brilliant,, best chuckle I've had today...

 

[jall55]

Maybe I phrased it badly.
You guys have been shooting and trapping magpies on sight for close on 200 years.
During that time the population of small birds has fallen, mostly due to habitat loss and pesticides.
Over the last 40 years or so, magpies have invaded the cities and suburbs where they are largely left unmolested.
Has the small bird population in cities declined proportionally in association with the increased magpie population?
If not, why not?
The more I look at what we do, the more convinced I am that we actually make very little difference most of the time and we would be far better off targeting our efforts where they’ll do most good.
For example, where a high population of common predators exists close to a colony of vulnerable species, it makes sense to reduce the odds in favour of the species you are trying to protect because each individual nest represents a sizeable proportion of that years potential population recruitment.
So trap and shoot the predators around the site.
But trying to kill them all you’re just ****inginthewind. There’s simply too many of them in too many places that you can’t touch to have much effect.

When it comes to crows you have allies, sheep and free range poultry farmers, plus cattlemen with feedlots, they’ll see to it that crows stay where they are.

We are lucky really because i have not allowed the use of pesticides / poisons for at least the last 10 years
Im taking out all the fence posts that poison the ground too
I am planting hedgerows and trees - game covers and supplementary feeding - but part of the success i am now seeing i am sure is predator control - all legal predator control
I think many will not have the opportunity to dictate how the land is managed so if all they can contribute is predator control i do believe that is a worthwhile contribution

Because there are less "prey" species the impact the magpie has on the overall population is far higher and i would suggest even more significant and unallowable

 

[JTO]

Calm down, it’s not the end of the world, maggers and jays have a reputation for damage that far exceeds their actual abilities.

I would target them if there was a particularly vulnerable species nesting in the area, but generally speaking they make very little difference.

When Larsen traps were becoming popular about 40 years ago, it was decided to examine how corvid control would benefit songbird numbers. Two large areas were surveyed, and the next year corvid numbers were severely depleted. Another survey was carried out and found that songbird numbers had increased by 80% in just one year. This resulted in a rise in the numbers of 'other predators' and after three years of corvid control, the increase in songbird numbers leveled out at 30%.

 

[Yorkie]

You drive around the housing estates around Bury St Edmunds and all you see is bloody magpie’s. With people feeding birds all the time now (which is great) it has resulted in an explosion of the buggers over the last few years. They IMO should be culled heavily not protected - can’t imagine it any different in any other part of the country.

Same where i am. It is devoid of bird life apart from hordes of Magpies and the odd Wood Pigeon. I gave up with my bird table. I have some Blackbirds that nest in my hedge but the Magpies always take the chicks.

Everything has its place in nature, but where i am the Magpie numbers are out of control. I would shoot them, but just not worth the grief from plod if the neighbours complain.

 

[jall55]

Same where i am. It is devoid of bird life apart from hordes of Magpies and the odd Wood Pigeon. I gave up with my bird table. I have some Blackbirds that nest in my hedge but the Magpies always take the chicks.

Everything has its place in nature, but where i am the Magpie numbers are out of control. I would shoot them, but just not worth the grief from plod if the neighbours complain.

Never give up bud
Use a larsen ?

 

[Dunwaters]

Maybe the Urban magpie population has different feeding habits than the rural population, just like the fox population living on food discarded by humans, I'm sure the magpie does exactly the same, obviously in rural situations they still eat the usual fare of eggs & chicks when available.

I once again shoot a few foxes on a micro patch of farmland at the bottom of my garden, I've observed this piece of land for 40 years, always just an odd Brown hare, three years ago when I got the nod to shoot the foxes I shot 16 the first winter, 7 last winter, and the Brown hares have bounced back, often I can count 20 or more with the thermal at night... surely it's down to trimming up the foxes as the farming practices has remained constant.

You are probably right, foxes do take leverets but it’s too small a sample to say for certain.

 

[Yorkie]

Never give up bud
Use a larsen ?

Hi Jall
To be honest, i would have no idea how to go about using a Larsen trap, plus the same thing would happen with regards to neighbours, only a matter of time before someone moans and i get the knock on the door.

 

[Dunwaters]

If you go back to the reason why, we hammered magpies and anything else that looked crooked at game bird’s because they were affecting the bottom line, every egg or chick they took is one less bird over the guns.
That was and is reasonable when we depended on wild stock and bantams in a rearing field.
It’s far less justifiable now.
It was also very effective when most of the country was managed shooting estates, nowadays there are just too many sanctuary areas for isolated efforts to have much effect.

 

[Bo Diddley]

You are probably right, foxes do take leverets but it’s too small a sample to say for certain.

Can you remember the "Salisbury Project" run by I think the Game Conservancy, they took an unmanaged section of the plain I think, controlled the predators, and logged the improvements. I'm not sure of the conclusions drawn. I'll have to Google it.

 

[JTO]

Can you remember the "Salisbury Project" run by I think the Game Conservancy, they took an unmanaged section of the plain I think, controlled the predators, and logged the improvements. I'm not sure of the conclusions drawn. I'll have to Google it.

I think that might have been what I referred to earlier. There was an article by Chapman Pincher about it.

 

[Bo Diddley]

I think that might have been what I referred to earlier. There was an article by Chapman Pincher about it.

You can Google the key findings of this project. (I don't know how to do a link off this Chromebook.)
The summary is that over the period of legal predator control the quantity of Grey Partridges increased significantly on each of the two patches of the Plain the trial was run on.

 

[jimmer.13]

“Don’t it always seem to go……. You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone”

 

[jall55]

I wonder if a legal challenge to this is the sort of thing people think we pay subs of our organisations for ?

 

[jall55]

If you go back to the reason why, we hammered magpies and anything else that looked crooked at game bird’s because they were affecting the bottom line, every egg or chick they took is one less bird over the guns.
That was and is reasonable when we depended on wild stock and bantams in a rearing field.
It’s far less justifiable now.
It was also very effective when most of the country was managed shooting estates, nowadays there are just too many sanctuary areas for isolated efforts to have much effect.

I think the other way really - i think its the duty of every sportsman to try and make the countryside better than they found it - and if thats culling vermin excellent
I also think by not culling we are allowing pools of these birds / animals to build up to effect those people that do

Im far more interested in saving yellowhammers et all than pheasants but whats good for the goose

 

[Roebuck9]

Same where i am. It is devoid of bird life apart from hordes of Magpies and the odd Wood Pigeon. I gave up with my bird table. I have some Blackbirds that nest in my hedge but the Magpies always take the chicks.

Everything has its place in nature, but where i am the Magpie numbers are out of control. I would shoot them, but just not worth the grief from plod if the neighbours complain.

Never give up, keep at them. My garden was deserted when I moved in due to Magpies and Grey Squirrels I saw them coming out of the hedge with eggs and chicks. I have installed a bird table now and have all sorts of birds comming in and also some fun too.

 

[Roebuck9]

The Red Kites were introduced into the Chiltern hills ie. near Oxford in 1990 and now I have seen a breading pair have raised chicks near Warwick some 51 miles away by them gradually moving up the M40 corridor.
Given time nature will do the rest but we can help by giving it a hand against the vermin.

 

[jall55]

The Red Kites were introduced into the Chiltern hills ie. near Oxford in 1990 and now I have seen a breading pair have raised chicks near Warwick some 51 miles away by them gradually moving up the M40 corridor.
Given time nature will do the rest but we can help by giving it a hand against the vermin.

Red kites ?
They are all over the place