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Magpie - anything I can do ? (2 Viewers)
- Thread starter Metermaid
- Start date
ALAN DICKINSON
Registered User
Who is
Children use this site so stick your comments elsewhere :bounce:Xenospiza said:
London Birder
Well-known member
excellent posts Poecile ...
anyway chums, Magpies are pukka ...
anyway chums, Magpies are pukka ...
ALAN DICKINSON said:
Were I a child, I'd be more offended by someone gloating over needless killing of a garden bird than the comments posted in responce. Good straight comment from Holland, in my opinion
ALAN DICKINSON
Registered User
The whole thing is getting to hilarious for me so I leave you to it
KnockerNorton
Well-known member
Rubyred said:
So I assume you trap during the breeding season too? How do you feel about leaving the magpie chicks in the nest to starve to death over the course of a day or two? Because that's what happens when you take their parents away.
And you didn't answer the question - how long between catches, and how many taken in a year? Also, how many nests do you have in your garden each year? I'm interested in the balance, you see: how many birds are you killing on one hand to allow how many nests to fledge on the other?
KnockerNorton
Well-known member
ALAN DICKINSON said:
So you don't fancy answering any of the points put to you then? Is that because the body of evidence in the scientific literature doesn't fit your layman's logic of hearsay and skewed anecdote? Or maybe you're just ignorant of the body of evidence...
Jane Turner
Well-known member
ALAN DICKINSON said:
You may not like the way it was expressed Alan, but its exactly what I think too.
Doing a breeding census they other month with my two youngest children, we came across a Larsen trap. My 9 year old was really shaken up by the experience and said to me "are the people who put it there cruel or just stupid"
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Poecile said:
Pay Attention! Which bit do you not understand?
Garden without trap --- Plenty of magpies and No songbirds fledging.
Garden with trap --- No magpies and Plenty of young songbirds.
As I said the trap is set on a permanent basis (356 days of the year)
You keep the magpies, I will keep the songbirds.
It is a legal method of control.
Finished; Life’s too short to spend time justifying trapping to you or to anyone else.
ALAN DICKINSON
Registered User
What are you on about
What points have been put to me? I have done nothing I must admit I am not too interested in what was happening 5000 years ago is this what you are on about or whatPoecile said:
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KnockerNorton
Well-known member
Rubyred said:
Actually, techinically it is not legal at all. It's just that the letter of the law is never enforced. You are only allowed to control magpies (under the Wildlife & Countryside Act 1981 as amended) if you can DEMONSTRATE that there is an urgent need to protect livelihood, public health or wildlife AND you have tried all other appropriate non-lethal methods. From what you've said, you aren't able to meet both of those (or either, probably). You are under the impression that you can, i.e. your garden full of songbirds anecdotes, but that doesn't count as proof because it's just your opinion. And have you tried all other non-lethal approaches? E.g scaring etc? It could even be construed that becasue you are supplying food and also a decoy, you are actually encouraging magpies which you then kill.
How many magpies is "plenty" by the way? And how big is your garden. You said you were leaving this thread earlier, by the way, so I'm ignoring your last threat too.
Oh, and how DO you feel about those dying magpie chicks, by the way? You never did say...
Jane Turner
Well-known member
Rubyred said:
The bit that you seem unable to grasp is that you are making no difference whatsoever to the breeding numbers of songbirds - merely creating a temporary summer increase.
The last time we had this debate we ended up in the BBC bitesize ecology section to explain the simplest aspects of population dynamics!
KnockerNorton
Well-known member
ALAN DICKINSON said:
You said that my assertion that populations of gradens birds being much higher now than in their natural state was "nonsense". I then asekd you where you think the enormous numbers of garden birds that we have now/in recent past lived before the creation of gardens and hedgerows. Because they didn't live in the forest. So where do you think they lived, at present numbers?
ALAN DICKINSON
Registered User
You are talking nonsense when you keep banging on about a natural state that no longer exists and will never exist again, by the way how did your website go the one you wanted photos for maybe you would like to furnish us all with the details it may be educational, all I was saying is that I miss birds that were once very common such as Song Thrush, these were in all gardens round here I remember they liked nesting in Holly
KnockerNorton
Well-known member
ALAN DICKINSON said:
That's the point! You keep banging on about the need to kill magpies because they are reducing the numbers of songbirds, which you alluded to be something of an unnatural state due to the increase in magpies, whereas it is the songbirds that are at 'unnaturally' high numbers. You're right, the natural state doesn't exist, so why on Earth are you supporting the wholly out of context killing of wild birds in one small garden that will do nothing for any species and not dent magpuie numbers one bit? All trapping in one small area does is create the need to keep trapping, and the need to keep killing. And why kill when it's pointless? If it worked, there'd be no need for contstant trapping. It would only make a blind bit of difference if everyone in your parish trapped magpies too.
Song thrushes have disappeared from all of your gardens due to every man and his dog spreading slug pellets around like confetti, and the tidying up of gardens and amenity areas. Magpies are not a major factor. cats are probably more of a factor in suburban areas. There has been research done on this, so why not look it up? It also found that thrushes and blackbirds had better breeding success in suburbia than in farmland, due to all the agri-molluscicides.
As for the website, I make an arbitrary distinction between work and play. This is play.
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ALAN DICKINSON
Registered User
Where in my posts have i said ANYTHING about killing Magpies. calm down.Poecile said:
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Sandy Beech
Alex
Am I in the right place? I really did expect a more mature response to Magpies etc on here. On another [none birding] board I use I get used to people saying "oh dear what can we do about the dreadful Magpies/Jays/Crows etc". Get real folks nature is like that. Or why no pleas for the poor hamless worms eaten by Blackbirds or the grubs snatched from their mothers by wicked Blue Tits.
As for the suggestion that Magpies may take what they simply see as food might be for fun or that they should exist without eating birds as they are omnivorous - who is going to start the re-education programme? Birds nore animlas use the same reasoning powers that we humans do so do not understand 'fun' etc.
Where I used to live neighbours had a massive (well it may have been two) Leylandii in which, at different levels, [year after year] lived pigeon (lower branches) Starlings (middle branches) and Magpies (top branches). Strangely enough given some of the views on here, they all survived through the 20 years I lived there and we also had plentiful Tits (Blue, Gt and Coal), Blackcap, numerous Sparrows, Dunnock, Thrush, Goldfinches, Greenfinches etc etc etc.
Oh and a few times were lucky enough to be visited by a really nasty Sparrowhawk who did for a few pigeons.
As for the suggestion that Magpies may take what they simply see as food might be for fun or that they should exist without eating birds as they are omnivorous - who is going to start the re-education programme? Birds nore animlas use the same reasoning powers that we humans do so do not understand 'fun' etc.
Where I used to live neighbours had a massive (well it may have been two) Leylandii in which, at different levels, [year after year] lived pigeon (lower branches) Starlings (middle branches) and Magpies (top branches). Strangely enough given some of the views on here, they all survived through the 20 years I lived there and we also had plentiful Tits (Blue, Gt and Coal), Blackcap, numerous Sparrows, Dunnock, Thrush, Goldfinches, Greenfinches etc etc etc.
Oh and a few times were lucky enough to be visited by a really nasty Sparrowhawk who did for a few pigeons.
Jane Turner
Well-known member
You might think that a forum for bird watchers would be a little more advanced wouldn't you!
Actually even wiping out every magpie in the area would not make a jot of difference to the breeding population. The only effect would be on post breeding juvenile numbers, which is why gamekeepers are so keen to do it - leaves more surplus for the idjits with guns to have a pop at!Poecile said:
abagguley
Well-known member
Sandy Beech said:
OK - as I made the 'omnivorous' comment which clearly annoys you I should explain what I meant. Or at least what I think I meant - I posted that over a year ago, and the thread has suddenly come back to life with people dissecting very old off-the-cuff comments and endowing them with all sorts of new meanings.
I wouldn’t normally interfere with any animal’s feeding activities – I often get a sprawk in the garden after the Blue Tits, and that’s OK –he needs to eat. Ditto blackbirds eating worms. I only mentioned the omnivorous aspect as I feel that shooing away the maggies from the nests isn’t going to harm their survival prospects, as there are plenty of other things for them to eat, including the food which I put out for them every day. I’m not robbing them of an essential part of their diet – just a seasonal tit-bit.
OK – it’s a sentimental response, not borne out of scientific reasoning, or in-depth ornithological knowledge, but so what? In a prolonged cold spell, I don’t just say “lots of birds will die, but that’s nature” – I put extra food out, and make sure there is fresh water with no ice. It’s a sentimental response to what’s happening – I’m not ‘letting nature take its course’, but I don’t think that makes it wrong.
Adrian
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