experiences with sparrow traps?

[PheasantsFirst]

At any time we have 4+ pens (3 pheasant pens, at least one chicken pen) with birds and food in them. Last fall a ton of house sparrows started coming into my pheasant pens. Almost any time i walked out there would be a flock of 50 flying away. I changed the feeder set up and that helped some. Eventually I head to put the plastic deer/bird net over the 2inch net on my pheasant pens. That cut down a lot but then the birds either found hole or moved to the chicken food. Over winter the chicken food is in the greenhouse. A couple days I would go out and block the door and get some birds, only got a few sparrows, but a lot of starlings. Now the birds are starting to come back in the pheasant pens, they are finding more holes. I'm thinking of getting a repeating sparrow trap. How effective are they? Thanks for any responses you may have.

 

[Kev]

They do work. Weird thing is, sometimes the traps can't be emptied fast enough. Other times there will be days of not even a single bird. Then a few birds will be in, and so on. I don't know what the cause of this inconsistency is(when the trap has been in same location the whole time). Location of trap does seem to play a part of their effectiveness.

It really is best to sparrow proof the pens because as long as they are not proofed, they will constantly be coming back. But yeah I do know what you mean, they just find some way in.. so annoying. Especially when they are working so hard to get in the pen and not the trap right there in front of them?!

 

[PheasantsFirst]

I'm still going to work on bird proofing the pens but the chickens have a 1/8 acre field to roam in and a small area with a net, no matter what I do with them their food will almost always be in the open. The pheasant pens have the smaller net on it and while chasing them out today I saw one pop out of 1in chicken wire

...

 

[Kelsie2290]

http://www.sparrowtraps.net/
This is a repeating sparrow/starling trap. I got a couple two years ago because I was having so much trouble with sparrows, they worked equally well with starlings when they were migrating through in the fall. For a couple of months I was catching 20+ birds a day in them. This is the third year I am using them and they have really kept the sparrow/starling population under control, I do keep them set to catch any young birds. Some adults are or seem to be trap wise so you can't catch them all, but the traps sure put a dent in the population.

 

[Kev]

Yeah I believe you... seen it happen myself. Have dog kennel doing duty as chicken coop, covered it all over with chicken wire, including the door. Didn't stop them.. and they squeeze right through if I happen to corner them in there.

I figure it makes it harder for them though as they prefer to find a larger gap(around the door area) and so far no starlings have ever gotten in there.

edited to add- that's the exact style trap mine is too.

 

[PheasantsFirst]

I've noticed that we have had a sharp-shined hawk get a sparrow or two befor and that keeps the birds away for most of the day, is there a way to a track the hawks?, only problems is that the may get the occasional chicken...

 

[Kev]

Hawks like that don't have that much effect on sparrows. They do catch them occasionally but they will completely bypass sparrows for a chance at pigeons or doves.

In fact, can't keep pigeons or doves here(because of the hawks)... can't keep sparrows AWAY..... many times there would be flocks of sparrows all day yet if a little baby chick accidentally gets outside of a coop for 5 minutes, it's swooped on by those cusses..... even with me just 10 feet away about ready to catch or herd that chick back in....

Probably impossible to track them, they depend on surprise attacks- they deliberately hide and move through trees and shrubbery and hope to catch something unawares.

 

[mandelyn]

I haven't used the traps, but instead went over the top half of the run with hardware cloth, and put a tarp over the top to double as shade. Dramatic decrease, even when the doors are wide open for free range. They must not have liked the change. The bottom half of the run was already hardware cloth.

We actually don't use chicken wire for anything. Coons can get through it if they really wanted to, dogs and such as well. We don't use any wire that's been woven, only welded. The 1/2 inch hardware cloth prevents thieving birds and rodents, and offers more protection from what would prefer chicken over their feed. You can more easily spot any gaps or weak spots with it too.

It's tedious to block their access, but worth it in long term savings on feed costs. You can get the black plastic netting (will only stop birds) in 7x100 foot rolls cheaply enough at Lowes or similar. It's a pain to work with though, and actually get all the spots unless you take the time. When ever we build another run, we're just doing the whole thing in hardware cloth. Otherwise you just end up spending money on other things, trying to find what will work just as well. What we've spent on prevention... about equal to the cost of just replacing the larger wire with hardware cloth.

It's getting to be that time of year where I need to hit the mice hard and heavy with traps. I saw one in the garage, and where there is one....

Last year I trapped 32 mice in a couple of weeks. Switched all feed storage to galvanized garbage cans. The squirrels decided they were hungry enough to chew through the plastic bins.

The good news is, we don't have any pests at the house. LOL They're all trying to form a dang ecosystem out at the coop. You should see my wolf spider collection out there. I leave them to eat other things. I have a big orb spider doing her part too, though she's only out towards the end of summer. She makes a new web every couple of days, almost 3 feet across!

Had some squirrels bickering over territory (prime yard here, compared to the other 7 they have to choose from on the block) and they make quite the thud when they hit the ground from 30 feet up. The losing squirrel hit the ground 3 times, and was quite dazed by then. There's enough of them now that I need to start thinking about trapping them. I only want a handful of them for predator alert, but not so many that they get sneaky for feed. The chickens seem to listen for those squirrels, they pause and look around when they start going off.

 

[PheasantsFirst]

I would love to put hardware cloth over the pens, but there is over a 1000sq ft for just the pheasant pens to be coverd. But to help support the the chicken wire we put it on cattle panels. I've got into the mid 20's for mice caught in a day. They can almost be as bad as sparrows, number wise.

We rarely get pigeons at our house, we will see them a few hundred yards down the road, once they started coming to our house. and once one died, no more came. But hawks also don't seem to stick around.