iridium-77
Active member
** Disclaimer: Contains potentially unpleasant images! **
Hi folks,
I've had a bird feeding station in the garden for a few months now, so I suppose this was inevitable at some stage. I got home from work to find a dead bird on my lawn. Well, about half of a dead bird; a decapitated bird would be a more fitting description. The back half of it is pretty much all there, but not a trace of the head and half of the breast. It's a wee brown one, a dunnock perhaps; we usually have a couple hopping about in the grass.
I'm not going to post a photo as it's a bit gruesome but for lack of a better way of describing it, it looks like a clean incision. The remaining part of the body doesn't look to have been sliced to bits or anything; there's just a big, rather neat, circular hole where the breast should be, with some innards still hanging out. As for the garden; there's a few small feathers in the grass. They seem to lead back towards the patio (about 2-3 metres from any shrubs), and they form a trail to where the remains now lie, which happens to be right beside the more overgrown edge of the garden.
So really I'm wondering what might have done it, so I can maybe take steps to prevent it happening again? My instinct says cat, but in the 9 or so months I've lived here I've never seen a cat in the garden; not many of my neighbours seem to have cats. I did see a sparrowhawk sitting on my fence two days ago though. Does this sound like something they might do? I just sort of assumed a raptor would eat the whole bird and/or take it away with them rather than eat it on the spot. Unless it was disturbed mid-meal perhaps, but even then I assumed it would come back for it.
My other question is what should I do with the body? Leaving it there might mean something will come back and eat it, thereby preventing it killing another bird. On the other hand, do I really want to be attracting predators back to my garden? Can you throw a dead bird in your compost bin?!
Also would the sight of a small bird lying dead on the grass discourage other small birds from coming to the garden? Seems a bit slow at the feeder this evening. Or would they just tend not to really pay any heed?
Hi folks,
I've had a bird feeding station in the garden for a few months now, so I suppose this was inevitable at some stage. I got home from work to find a dead bird on my lawn. Well, about half of a dead bird; a decapitated bird would be a more fitting description. The back half of it is pretty much all there, but not a trace of the head and half of the breast. It's a wee brown one, a dunnock perhaps; we usually have a couple hopping about in the grass.
I'm not going to post a photo as it's a bit gruesome but for lack of a better way of describing it, it looks like a clean incision. The remaining part of the body doesn't look to have been sliced to bits or anything; there's just a big, rather neat, circular hole where the breast should be, with some innards still hanging out. As for the garden; there's a few small feathers in the grass. They seem to lead back towards the patio (about 2-3 metres from any shrubs), and they form a trail to where the remains now lie, which happens to be right beside the more overgrown edge of the garden.
So really I'm wondering what might have done it, so I can maybe take steps to prevent it happening again? My instinct says cat, but in the 9 or so months I've lived here I've never seen a cat in the garden; not many of my neighbours seem to have cats. I did see a sparrowhawk sitting on my fence two days ago though. Does this sound like something they might do? I just sort of assumed a raptor would eat the whole bird and/or take it away with them rather than eat it on the spot. Unless it was disturbed mid-meal perhaps, but even then I assumed it would come back for it.
My other question is what should I do with the body? Leaving it there might mean something will come back and eat it, thereby preventing it killing another bird. On the other hand, do I really want to be attracting predators back to my garden? Can you throw a dead bird in your compost bin?!
Also would the sight of a small bird lying dead on the grass discourage other small birds from coming to the garden? Seems a bit slow at the feeder this evening. Or would they just tend not to really pay any heed?
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