Well I have some thoughts that might help you.
Generally, when you feel something its your inner self trying to tell you something.
If you study symbiotic relationships of plants and animals, I believe you'll find better ways of doing things, and managing your farm. But I see this as an overall life quest for all of us, and not so much for any particular person being deficient.
If we could look back and see how the garden of Eden was setup for example, I'm sure we'd be able to study all kinds of symbiotic relationships and ways of getting nature and animals, and farm animals to work together in healthy ways.
So...your dove and finch problem.
I get that you probably don't want a ton of doves and finches.
However, they are providing a cleaning service for you. I know this sounds weird but consider the alternative; rats, and mice.
Would you rather have finches and doves or rats and mice?
I'm not saying you can't kill them or shouldn't. And you can take a middle ground approach.
I think birds are beautiful and interesting. They also can help you to tell if an area has predators themselves because if animal predators are nearby they will leave. (Although they won't be vocal about it in ways we can understand to tell us.)
Birds also can be an indicator that an area can support life and isn't totally dead. They generally like to be near vibrant areas with vegetation, trees, and water sources. So if you don't see any birds there, its actually a bad signal; maybe mismanagement of natural resources, stripped vegetation, chemical saturation, etc.
So...what can you do?
I think you can try to keep the food covered and not let them get too much. And you can try to keep their numbers down. Finches and doves are also better than having pigeons or crows...so it could be worse in other ways also.
Some people do eat doves. When I was a kid, I used to hear of people going hunting for doves (or wild pheasants). People don't do that kind of stuff anymore around here because the growth of the city sort of swallowed all that up, which is sad.
Finches seem kind of interesting as a bird.
I would also believe (but haven't proven myself) that finches would have less disease vectors in common with humans that they can pass onto us, than rats and mice. Basically rats, mice, and bats are HUGE disease vectors.
So you could mitigate some of the feed loss. But a little bit is OK. You could keep their numbers down but not totally destroy all of them.
Generally, when you feel something its your inner self trying to tell you something.
If you study symbiotic relationships of plants and animals, I believe you'll find better ways of doing things, and managing your farm. But I see this as an overall life quest for all of us, and not so much for any particular person being deficient.
If we could look back and see how the garden of Eden was setup for example, I'm sure we'd be able to study all kinds of symbiotic relationships and ways of getting nature and animals, and farm animals to work together in healthy ways.
So...your dove and finch problem.
I get that you probably don't want a ton of doves and finches.
However, they are providing a cleaning service for you. I know this sounds weird but consider the alternative; rats, and mice.
Would you rather have finches and doves or rats and mice?
I'm not saying you can't kill them or shouldn't. And you can take a middle ground approach.
I think birds are beautiful and interesting. They also can help you to tell if an area has predators themselves because if animal predators are nearby they will leave. (Although they won't be vocal about it in ways we can understand to tell us.)
Birds also can be an indicator that an area can support life and isn't totally dead. They generally like to be near vibrant areas with vegetation, trees, and water sources. So if you don't see any birds there, its actually a bad signal; maybe mismanagement of natural resources, stripped vegetation, chemical saturation, etc.
So...what can you do?
I think you can try to keep the food covered and not let them get too much. And you can try to keep their numbers down. Finches and doves are also better than having pigeons or crows...so it could be worse in other ways also.
Some people do eat doves. When I was a kid, I used to hear of people going hunting for doves (or wild pheasants). People don't do that kind of stuff anymore around here because the growth of the city sort of swallowed all that up, which is sad.
Finches seem kind of interesting as a bird.
I would also believe (but haven't proven myself) that finches would have less disease vectors in common with humans that they can pass onto us, than rats and mice. Basically rats, mice, and bats are HUGE disease vectors.
So you could mitigate some of the feed loss. But a little bit is OK. You could keep their numbers down but not totally destroy all of them.
Most doves, including mourning doves, are native to the US, unless you're talking about the Rock Pigeon, aka city pigeon. Most finches, as well, unless you mean the House Finch or House Sparrow.
