Bloody magpies

[deeangeo]

Magpies are brilliant...shoot one & others come to the wake, so you can shoot more on the ground. If they fly, which they will, they return after a short while & you can shoot another. Must have shot over a thousand over the last few years, so now if they come, movement at the window sends them packing...but they don't come near much now.

 

[Cyres]

A couple of years ago I had a very early summer bike ride through up market Yate, I counted in excess of 90 magpies. Nothing to see 10 + at a time, thus when I was offered a larsen trap it was gratefully received. I must say I was also worried about prying eyes but my initial concerns were soon allayed when my neighbours were very pleased as also they were suffering magpie issues even attacking their pets. So this part of Yate is a magpie free zone at present but they move in very quickly but at least the nesting birds are safe.

D

 

[cyberstag]

Unfortunately this is also true.

Our own farm is improved grassland, virtual green desert, hedges cut back to the stumps, every wet spot is drained.

I'm 47, in my lifetime in rural Ireland I would guess wildlife diversity has dropped by maybe 90%. Around home we used to have coots, moorhens, rails, skylarks, snipe, curlew, corncrakes, hares in abundance and every type of small bird. Now there is bugger all outside of a few little oasis'. Our own garden and an old damp derelict wood of about two acres are full of small birds and wildlife. 200m away from either of these places and there are only a few rabbits and pigeons.

One of the problems I think is that if you are old enough to remember the diversity we had on farms years ago then you are old enough to be irrelevant in the eyes of the younger generation who are making all the farming decisions now. Things have changed a lot and much as I would love to see things as they were the younger generation have to make a living somehow. It may well be to the detriment of the environment but they won't realise that until it is too late.

 

[User00025]

60 years ago it took me 3 years to get a magpie egg and two to get a carrion crow. Why? because every farmer and keeper shot the sitting birds (usually in the dark). The change in farming practices has a lot to answer for the dearth of songbirds, but the increase in winged predators has a terrible effect. Where I live we have bird feeders and in our small hamlet we are starting to lose songbirds year by year, there are none in the surrounding countryside. With over 300 Jackdaws,Rooks and Carrions feeding on vegetable waste (fed to cattle) in a local farm yard and a pair of hunting sparrowhawks it is getting worse. The other big problem is cats, we have at least 15 locals and they have a great effect. Personally I kill everything in the corvid line, and on our shoot cats are as rare as hen's teeth, but our local "supposed keeper" never uses anything but a gun for vermin control. There are now more buzzards and kites than blackbirds or sparrows and believe me they are not carrion eaters. Being an ancient it really annoys me, but this is a result of stupid "Conservation" ideas and I have to bite my tongue on occasions as I don't think my great grandkids will see many songbirds,if any, and hopefully I will be gone before the last nightingale sings in this area. When will the idiots at RSPB realise what they are preaching is total c..p and stop putting winged predators before all other birds.

 

[old man]

Looking historically at so called "conservation groups" it seems to me that their obsessions totally disregard the detrimental impact caused on other associated species?

What we need is some well reasoned application of balance on the assumption that all things have interrelated consequence?

 

[countrryboy]

I am no lover of magpies and give carrion crows no quarter. But the overwhelming reason for the decline in wild bird numbers is farming. The massive changes even in my lifetime (45 years) have had a dire effect on farm land birds, some species have been pretty much decimated. Vermin is easy to blame but fundamentally the reason lies in the farmers chemical store ( and silage clamp I would argue too).

It may depend on ur area and type of farming but blaming farmers is the easy excuse (bit like blaming global warming for everything) yes modern farming techniques generally don't help but there are vast areas of countryside where modern farming involes using a quad bike instead of walking and thats the only real change for decades yet birds are still declining. Why
And as brewsher? said wot about all the urban areas that should provide decent habitat for song birds farming shouldnae influence those populations

In my area i'd say that farming really hasnae changed that much in past 30yrs, most of the 'good' chemicals pesticides are now banned, burns are actually running fairly clean now, when i was a boy i can think of plenty of burns running full of slurry/effluent.

The fields i ferretted as a boy have not changed, no hedges taken out or ponds drained, only real change is far more vermin. In fact if anything more hedges have been planted and ponds dug.
Go to a similar area/farming type 30 miles away the difference in ground nesting birds is amazing, the only difference is a decent keepers near to grouse moors

The GWCT has done mant studies so has Songbird survival and more often than not where predators are not managed prey birds often struggle to fledge enoug chicks to keep the population stable never mind rising.


I would imagine there is possibly an argument for not shooting Magpies/corvids all year round, generally the main damage is caused by nest predation rather than killing adults, so if u have any time issues target ur control to early spring/summer, so hammer them early spring thrpou summer. But benefits of shooting them later on wil be minimal locally as new ones will only come in to fill void, alhou it is always 1 less corvid which is always a good thing but where numbers are high probably wasting ur time.

Someone mentioned birds with no head, i'd say more likely to be sparrow hawk kills (althou classic tawny owl in pheasant poults below roost too) than magpie/corvid


Ps Does anyone know who operates the camera's? Is it rsppb or a private owner?
Really be surprised rsb released footage and amazed not far more of it the ammount of nests they monitored over the years.
Can always remember a few years ago osprey chicks where taken by a buzzard 2 yrs on trot and that was the 1st 2 yr of monitoring.

 

[JTO]

I had another Larsen trap broken open today.