neilgunton
Member
Hi, I am wondering if anyone has advice for me.
We recently started feeding the birds in our back yard, with a number of tube feeders from Wild Birds Unlimited. They seemed to be working well, a little too well in fact... now we are overrun with grackles, starlings, pigeons and sparrows. To cut a long story short, I noticed today that one or more of the grackles is actively attacking sparrows, killing them and proceeding to eat them. This happened three times so far today. I had earlier found a dead sparrow in the yard, but I put it down to nature at work.
Now to be clear, I know all about the arguments for letting nature run its course, but I truthfully just feel bad about this. I don't particularly have anything against any of these birds on an individual level, but right now the grackles are just ruining it for everybody else. They are so hyper-aggressive... I was able to live with that, but now they have actually started killing my other "customers", and my wife is quite distraught about it. I don't know if it makes any sense, but we wouldn't have such a problem if it was a hawk of some kind coming occasionally and grabbing a bird. It's just that this is the last straw - these grackles already totally dominated my yard, and now they're killing too. They aren't even supposed to do that, I called the store and she told me she had been doing this for 30 years and never heard of a grackle killing a sparrow. Now I've seen it three times in one day, so obviously someone figured it out and others are maybe copying.
At any rate... I don't feel good any more about this entire situation. I don't really want lectures on nature, please, this is just a simple request for help in fixing what is quite a distressing situation. Does anyone who feeds birds want to see this kind of thing on a regular basis? That's not what we signed up for.
We got a couple of the cages that go around the tube feeders (again from WBU) and it was actually from inside one of these that the grackle grabbed the sparrow, dragged it out, carried it down to the ground, and proceeded to peck it to death.
I tried taking the cages away, thinking that perhaps this was just the grackle taking out its frustration and rage at not being able to get to the food, but very soon after I took the cages away, I observed a grackle (same one? no idea) doing it again, grabbing a sparrow sitting on top of the pole and going for its head. I banged on the window, which broke it up, and the sparrow got away.
Any ideas? Feeding the birds wasn't supposed to be like this...
Thanks,
/Neil
p.s. I also have a "Squirrel Buster" feeder that we just got today. The grackles solved that one quickly... if I adjust the spring tension so that cardinals can use it, then this is apparently enough for the grackle to be able to insert its beak into the crack and lever it up so it can get into the food. So it just keeps doing that.
p.p.s. We are feeding millet and no-mess blend in the two main tube feeders, and safflower/sunflower in the Squirrel Buster, along with a couple of open trays, one with striped sunflower and the other with safflower only. The grackles seem to like whatever we put out, safflower included, whatever, they eat it. And they have no problem hanging onto the perches on the tube feeders.
We recently started feeding the birds in our back yard, with a number of tube feeders from Wild Birds Unlimited. They seemed to be working well, a little too well in fact... now we are overrun with grackles, starlings, pigeons and sparrows. To cut a long story short, I noticed today that one or more of the grackles is actively attacking sparrows, killing them and proceeding to eat them. This happened three times so far today. I had earlier found a dead sparrow in the yard, but I put it down to nature at work.
Now to be clear, I know all about the arguments for letting nature run its course, but I truthfully just feel bad about this. I don't particularly have anything against any of these birds on an individual level, but right now the grackles are just ruining it for everybody else. They are so hyper-aggressive... I was able to live with that, but now they have actually started killing my other "customers", and my wife is quite distraught about it. I don't know if it makes any sense, but we wouldn't have such a problem if it was a hawk of some kind coming occasionally and grabbing a bird. It's just that this is the last straw - these grackles already totally dominated my yard, and now they're killing too. They aren't even supposed to do that, I called the store and she told me she had been doing this for 30 years and never heard of a grackle killing a sparrow. Now I've seen it three times in one day, so obviously someone figured it out and others are maybe copying.
At any rate... I don't feel good any more about this entire situation. I don't really want lectures on nature, please, this is just a simple request for help in fixing what is quite a distressing situation. Does anyone who feeds birds want to see this kind of thing on a regular basis? That's not what we signed up for.
We got a couple of the cages that go around the tube feeders (again from WBU) and it was actually from inside one of these that the grackle grabbed the sparrow, dragged it out, carried it down to the ground, and proceeded to peck it to death.
I tried taking the cages away, thinking that perhaps this was just the grackle taking out its frustration and rage at not being able to get to the food, but very soon after I took the cages away, I observed a grackle (same one? no idea) doing it again, grabbing a sparrow sitting on top of the pole and going for its head. I banged on the window, which broke it up, and the sparrow got away.
Any ideas? Feeding the birds wasn't supposed to be like this...
Thanks,
/Neil
p.s. I also have a "Squirrel Buster" feeder that we just got today. The grackles solved that one quickly... if I adjust the spring tension so that cardinals can use it, then this is apparently enough for the grackle to be able to insert its beak into the crack and lever it up so it can get into the food. So it just keeps doing that.
p.p.s. We are feeding millet and no-mess blend in the two main tube feeders, and safflower/sunflower in the Squirrel Buster, along with a couple of open trays, one with striped sunflower and the other with safflower only. The grackles seem to like whatever we put out, safflower included, whatever, they eat it. And they have no problem hanging onto the perches on the tube feeders.
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