Sparrowhawk

wot does WUMs. mean ?  please dont run off com back and talk to me

 have nothing to do i just sit here all day

I see ok. I’m out in the sticks and see about one SH a year if I’m lucky. On the other hand there are always lots of crows and jackdaws and magpies along with many more buzzards. 

Hello Mr Kes at last someone who has something sensible to say. I dont have a problem with crows ,jackdaws ,magpies and buzzards in fact i like them as they chase off the SH. i get lots of them were i live and they have become a pest in fact i put rats above them on the pest scale .

I see. Well that is unfortunate. I imagine there will be regulars that know where to come to get a feed. From what I have read, SH catch about 1 in 100 on attempts so they have to work quite hard to get a meal. Personally I am very fond of all birds and especially birds of prey, the birds of prey have been largely reduced through shooting and poisoning over decades and it is still happening to a large degree in the UK. I think SH have adapted to a lack of birds in the countryside having been largely reduced through industrial farming and pesticides so now know to visit smaller gardens with bird food as that is where the larger population of birds will be. A little bit like the hedgehog situation. I have never seen a hedgehog in 40 years living out in the sticks. But people who live in towns or villages in small gardens see them far more regularly. Nature has been messed up over a long time to a point where the balance is all wrong. We see more non-native species than we do of native, things like Canada Geese and American Mink are far more common than Greylag Geese or Water Voles. Anyway I am sure you know all that. It is very unfortunate that there is such a small amount of wildlife in general in the UK. Other parts of the world still have problems but in a number of cases they have not lost so much of their native species. Unfortunately with all of the corvids we have a problem keeping ducklings or goslings. Last year we had 34 ducklings of which 2 made it through the corvid catching net. Mink will go for them, but the corvids are the ones that are more on top of catching the poor little babies. A couple years ago I was unfortunate enough to see a gang of magpies and crows take out a young jay (same family) but it was a brutal attack on the poor thing. Nature can be cruel indeed.

Don't get me wrong i don't want to see them wiped out but they do need to be cutback i know people with pigeons that are loosing 30 to 40 birds a year in fact its so bad that there are lots of pigeon people giving up. Its the same with many people who used to feed the birds in the garden they no longer do it because of SH . But the pigeon people have had enough and there are a lot of them that just shoot them now and to be honest i don't blame them.

I see what you mean and understand that. I suppose the issue I generally have with humans dealing with nature is that unfortunately we have to live on this planet with nature and somehow we believe we should be the ones to do to nature what is best for our needs financially or otherwise, I find alot of the time the people who have a problem with it do not understand the whole picture, not always but mostly. Its a bit like the old removal of all wolves in the UK, some hundred years ago or so, all wolves were shot to extinction in the UK. Now as a result billions of pounds worth of damage is done to our woodlands and timber business because there is no natural predator to fallow deer, well fallow deer are not native to UK. But apart from collisions with cars and hunters shooting them there is no predator because us humans shot the predator to extinction (and someone in their wisdom imported Fallow Deer a long time ago) and before that got rid of all the beavers and before that got rid of all the other top predators such as Lynx. I have heard many things from people over the years, someones have told me that they shoot Golden Eagles in scotland because they pick off the Grouse or Pheasant and lose money from that. The reality is that Pheasant and Partridge are a big business and so we end up with a lot less Golden Eagles and far too many pheasants. I put bird food out for my garden birds and what I get is 20 pheasants coming to eat it all. They get fat and then get shot  by local land owners that have big shoots. Pheasants are most definitely not native to UK and in fact eat a lot of the food that the native birds should be eating. Over 50 million game birds are put out annually by big businesses making big money and in some cases keeping a very low biodiverse landscape for the sake of bird rearing and shooting. As I say. I think things have gotten out of control and very unbalanced. So I do not really have a good response to your point on pigeons, but I think it is part of a much larger issue. Sorry to go on. Hope I have been of some help with my ramblings.

Your not going on mate it was very interesting to read what you had to say,and i don't have a problem with anything you said. I just have problems with people who have nothing to say and they want to act all superior because you spelt a word wrong then when you challenge them they run off and hide. But thanks for your reply.

Kevin Pigeon said:

Your not going on mate it was very interesting to read what you had to say,and i don't have a problem with anything you said. I just have problems with people who have nothing to say and they want to act all superior because you spelt a word wrong then when you challenge them they run off and hide. But thanks for your reply.

Morning Kevin Pigeon. Sorry I left you with nothing to do yesterday, but I really did have better things to do. You challenged me? Sorry, I missed that. Please will you quickly let me know how you did that? I've again got things to do today, and reading your dark ages based posts aren't adding much.