Song birds and Seagulls?

Rural feral cats help keep rodent populations down, in fact with the rats over taking the cities they may be useful there yet. Raccoons and porcupines are getting to be a problem up north. Vets are plagued by the diseases they carry and transfer to household pets. However we've digressed very far from song birds. I remember a very stern lecture (perhaps a swift slap in the back of the head) from shooting my pellet gun, and missing, at a small bird. I was about 10 I think. I too love to hear the birds in the mornings, cept that bloody woodpecker in my back yard that's killing an old maple tree in the back yard. he comes back every year and goes to the same tree and drills a new hole.


Ian
 
id love(this mean if it where legal it be done by me) to shoot seagulls but i know its not legal but them dam things really p*** me off when im fishing they sit there and wait for you to catch a goby or two one day i got smart and waited till the gobys piled up(almost always do) and then dumped them a few hundred yards away left me alone for the rest of the day.

house sparrows and starlings and pigeons they get no mercy :p .22 cb caps,
.22 rat shot,.410 loaded with sand(you have to be close with this one) and the pellet guns and slingshots may ways to get them buggers mostly inside barns and sheds

introducted and invasive species watch out they all get no mercy from me i go on a carp killing campaign atleast once a year i kill them drag them home and throw them in the compost its gotton to the point where i dont try to catch bass or any other real game fish anymore :redface:
 
chinook said:
How are gulls migratory. The only migrate to the dump and back.
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There are seagulls outside of Newfoundland, believe it or not. They wouldn't do well in MB in January, yet there's plenty around this time of year. FWIW, Arctic terns migrate further than any other bird.

They don't bother me other than while haying, they eat all the little birds that can't fly well yet, sometimes I wish I carried a shotgun. We're talking Herring gulls here, aka "dump ducks".
That said, I've seen hundreds of them eating grasshoppers on fields, so they definitely have their benefits.

I agree feral cats should all be shot. :D
 
jjohnwm said:
As a kid I was tempted to shoot gulls, and was always told by my father that they were protected because they are such an efficient scavenger. True or not, they don't cause a lot of problems inland, are certainly part of the natural ecology, and certainly are not edible, so why bother them? I can see how Maritimers with piles of gull crap on their roofs might feel differently.:p

Songbirds are protected for a good reason...most species are suffering serious declines in population, from habitat loss and other reasons...which brings us to the perfect birds to shoot: the introduced species that are one of the major reasons for the decline in native species.

House sparrows, starlings and pigeons (rock doves) are all introduced pest species that displace and compete with natives. They are usually legal to shoot anytime, year-round, no limit. Check local regs to make sure.

Crows are usually legal to shoot at any time. They seem to be smarter than most people, so it's doubtful they are in much danger of depletion.

And finally...just to stir the pot a bit...don't forget the ultimate pests, the big-game of introduced, invasive, ecologically-disruptive, shoot-on-sight, PITA critters. No, it's not wild pigs, at least not in Canada yet. It's feral cats.
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Feral cats? What part of Canada are you in?
 
Danmurphy83 said:
Feral cats? What part of Canada are you in?
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Now in Manitoba, where the weather and the coyotes conspire to keep cats out of the picture. But when I lived in Ontario not far from Lindsay ("City of Kawartha Mistakes") our home was in an area that was largely cottages. A shocking number of folks would abandon their cats when they went back home. Most suffered and died when winter hit, but a fair number managed to go native and reproduce; their young were very capable of taking care of themselves.

My wife and I spend a lot on birdfeeders and seed; I hated seeing songbirds being picked off right in my yard by cats. I shot literally dozens every year. In the case of the recently-arrived housecats...often scabby, mangy, emaciated and with missing ears and portions of tails thanks to frostbite...I think I was doing them a favour. But that wasn't my motivation.
 
Thislilfishy said:
Rural feral cats help keep rodent populations down, in fact with the rats over taking the cities they may be useful there yet. Raccoons and porcupines are getting to be a problem up north. Vets are plagued by the diseases they carry and transfer to household pets. However we've digressed very far from song birds. I remember a very stern lecture (perhaps a swift slap in the back of the head) from shooting my pellet gun, and missing, at a small bird. I was about 10 I think. I too love to hear the birds in the mornings, cept that bloody woodpecker in my back yard that's killing an old maple tree in the back yard. he comes back every year and goes to the same tree and drills a new hole.


Ian
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If a woodpecker is doing his thing on any tree, that tree is already in trouble and he will actually prolong the life of the tree. They peck holes to get insects that are in the tree and that’s what’s killing your tree! Haha just noticed the necro thread
 
According to the ethnographic literature the Natives ate Gulls in BC wonder if any still do? I know some gather their eggs.

When I was a kid my Dad told me that only an Italian would eat songbirds. Told my Wife that, she said "you're Dad's a racist", low and behold, was reading National Geographic one day and they had an article about threats to songbirds and they had a photo of some Italians sitting down to eat a casserole dish full of songbirds. Showed it to her and said "my Dad knew what he was talking about".

The old BC Hunting Regulations allowed for shooting songbirds in your Garden. I'm guessing the 1917 Act shut this down.
 
MiG25 said:
When I was a kid my Dad told me that only an Italian would eat songbirds. Told my Wife that, she said "you're Dad's a racist", low and behold, was reading National Geographic one day and they had an article about threats to songbirds and they had a photo of some Italians sitting down to eat a casserole dish full of songbirds. Showed it to her and said "my Dad knew what he was talking about".
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"Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie...when the pie was opened the birds began to sing"...
 
Danmurphy83 said:
Feral cats? What part of Canada are you in?
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Many people are clueless how many feral/stray cats there are across North America. Maybe take a peek on Google to see how many millions of songbirds and other native critters these pests kill annually.

Anyone who thinks their outdoor cats only kill rodents are about as smart as a mouse 🤣
 
nomad 68 said:
Holy necrothreads Batman!!!
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Right? I try to check the date on a thread before I post on it...but I just look at the last post. This does nothing for me when that guy did not do the same and actually responded to some "vintage" thread from days gone by.

And then the rest of us pile on and just start circling the drain, looking silly...:)
 
canadian hunter312 said:
Many people are clueless how many feral/stray cats there are across North America. Maybe take a peek on Google to see how many millions of songbirds and other native critters these pests kill annually.

Anyone who thinks their outdoor cats only kill rodents are about as smart as a mouse 🤣
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From Google:
"Free-ranging cats kill an estimated 1.3 to 4 billion birds annually in the United States and approximately 60 to 100 million in Canada."
 
bcsteve said:
From Google:
"Free-ranging cats kill an estimated 1.3 to 4 billion birds annually in the United States and approximately 60 to 100 million in Canada."
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Might be good to look in to the stats on how many birds are killed in the name of "Ecologically Friendly Power Generation". Windmills in particular. If the Media reported Windmill kills of just the Predatory birds, the same way they screeched about the ponds at the Tar Sands, there would not be one left standing, as far as I figure...

Not dissing on the cat issue, which there is one of, and I have 'some' personal experiences disposing of (some A-hole was live trapping cats and dumping them near our farm), but there are a LOT of issues facing various bird species, and they cannot all be laid at the feet of feral cats.

Case in point, last year, my Mom actually confronted her neighbor, as the neighbor was hanging Hummingbird Feeders, a bit over a foot off the ground, out her back door... Feeding ground for the local cats... Tough on the Hummingbirds!
 
trevj said:
Might be good to look in to the stats on how many birds are killed in the name of "Ecologically Friendly Power Generation". Windmills in particular. If the Media reported Windmill kills of just the Predatory birds, the same way they screeched about the ponds at the Tar Sands, there would not be one left standing, as far as I figure...

Not dissing on the cat issue, which there is one of, and I have 'some' personal experiences disposing of (some A-hole was live trapping cats and dumping them near our farm), but there are a LOT of issues facing various bird species, and they cannot all be laid at the feet of feral cats.

Case in point, last year, my Mom actually confronted her neighbor, as the neighbor was hanging Hummingbird Feeders, a bit over a foot off the ground, out her back door... Feeding ground for the local cats... Tough on the Hummingbirds!
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Google says for every one bird killed by a windmill there’s thousands of others that are killed by cats.


You realize the root cause of those hummingbirds being killed isn’t your neighbour who feeds them 1 foot of the ground, it’s the outdoor cats?


Cat owners who let their cats outdoors uncontrolled have to be some of the most ignorant, disrespectful and delusional pet owners on the planet.
 
I for one don't give a rat's ass what Google says or does not say about the issue. I have eyes; I saw many dozens of instances of cats skulking in, through and about our yard in Ontario with small dead birds in their maws. I'd see that easily ten times as often as seeing one with a rodent. The cats are a non-native small predator, filling a niche...i.e. killer of small birds...that was normally empty in our landscape. When I get a Shrike or Sharp-shinned Hawk or other small avian predator around my feeders, I'm thrilled; they are suffering from similar issues as all the other birds.

The birds are in serious decline due to a number of reasons, certainly. The cats are just one that is very visible and in-your-face to a rural homeowner who likes birds. I can't solve the issue, but I certainly can and do take every opportunity to make a dent in the problem, at least right in my yard.

Cats in my yard is just one of the many negatives I largely left behind when I moved from Ontario to Manitoba. I don't miss 'em at all.

Okay...it's someone else's turn to perform CPR on this fourteen-year-old thread. :)
 
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