Grey Shrike-Thrush (1 Viewer)

Do you know if the Grey Shrike-Thrush migrates from its habitats in NSW.
I had a very friendly Grey Shrike-Thrush who was a frequent visitor many times a day.His name was Shrikey.Shrikey would follow me around my vegie patch and dart around the shovel as I dug up grubs for him and his feathered mates.
I fed him maggots and curl grubs.He would bash the large curl grubs to death and fling there innards everywhere,.,shocking table manners!!.
He was a real character and would even come inside my house and jump around me on my lounge.
But I haven't seen him since the end of September and I'm hoping that he has just gone off for some sexual hanky panky or has headed off somewhere distant.
Just recently I have heard and seen another Grey Shrike-Thrush, but it isn't Shrikey.
I dread the thought that his friendliness has been his demise through visiting other people and got done in by a cat.
I've had to kill a lot of feral cats who started to stalk the many birds who enjoy my hospitality of a large bird bath and plenty of fresh meat nibbles, insects and some seed.

I would love to know what method you used to kill those feral cats.

mr_birdman said:

I would love to know what method you used to kill those feral cats.

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He threw a Wedgie at it, mate!
MJB

Crikey Shrikey!..........hopefully 'hanky panky'

Beautiful, beautiful birds..........it seems a lot of our little feathered mates are a bit quiet at the moment (probably um |:$| 'busy' teehee....).
Far preferrable to be 'loved up' rather than fallen foul of some 'mongrel moggie' (goodnight 'whiskas' :cat: n good ridance!), or displaced by some bas***d blackbird (apols to UK folk who don't have the pleasure of the 'harmonica').

I've always known them to be sedentary, and yes rather curiously gregarious; perhaps shrikey's taken to sampling other 'nosheries' in his patch, or if he was just an adolescent maybe he's moved to neighboring digs, as the young 'uns are incrementally expansionary. Here's a bit more on the Grey Shrike-Thrush

Chosun |>|

P.S. Mr Birdman.......a bit of lead in the scon usually fixes 'em in less in 10,000th of a second or so; or a boo'merang, or a nulla nulla, or even a 3 iron!.....whateva's handy............actually the old girls out in the desert regard 'pudy tat' as a bit of a delicacy, go figure!............I tink I taw a pudy tat.......:-O

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For long, long time.............. the earth - she cry....
now, the children - they cry too....
All terribly, terribly sad...

It doesn't matter as long as it's humane. After all the feral cats are still animals like 'em or not. Should take a 3 iron to anyone who neglects their cats in the first place to let them go feral .

mr_birdman said:

It doesn't matter as long as it's humane. After all the feral cats are still animals like 'em or not. Should take a 3 iron to anyone who neglects their cats in the first place to let them go feral .

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That's a few golf bags of 3-irons, then! There are feral cats across the whole of Australia. I saw more than a few on Newhaven Reserve some years ago. Together with introduced red foxes, they are probably responsible for much of the disappearance of native small marsupials (cattle, with their high foot-load pressure compared to that of kangaroos, are probably responsible for the rest, their weight collapsing the shallow burrows).

People like cats, even though cats seldom reciprocate, being splendidly selfish in the main, but there is an aspect of cat behaviour that contributes to so many becoming feral, and that is the amount of territory a cat actually needs. Despite centuries of domestication (and more recently, of neutering), most cats require a territory of about 400 metres diameter, say 150 000 square metres - from studies of farm cats - and so the human habit of clustering together closely (worse in Europe and UK than in Oz) often means that urban domesticated cats have less than 100 square metres each. In territorial squabbling, the risk is that many well-domesticated cats are driven out of their comfortable lives, unable to return.

It's no surprise then that any single farm cat may kill as many birds as any urban cat, but if urban cat density is about 1500 times as great as 'natural' density, then bird mortality could well be significant in urban areas.
MJB

I don't have HANZAB with me, so I can't be sure, but, from looking at Birdata, shows that the birds move south in the Summer, though your house is in the year long range, your bird could have moved south for some shagging, here's hoping he turns up next year!