Never Ending Parade of Predators

[Oregon Blues]

It just never stops. I opened my back door today to find eight ( 8! ) Magpies in my back yard, drinking from the dog's water dish.

Those boogers will steal eggs, kill small chickens, and I caught them one time trying to kill a puppy.

I just barely persuaded the crows to go and find a safer neighborhood and now it is magpies. Well, with a huge starving black cat sandwiched in between, trying to figure out how to get into the covered pens with my poult and duckling.

Poor starving abandoned cats seems to have only made it for 2 days before the coyotes got him. He seems to be gone. If I ever catch anyone in the act of abandoning an animal in my neighborhood, they are going to wish I didn't catch them.

 

[2plus2 is44]

I do not think the crows will hurt anything. They actually will keep Hawks away.

 

[Enchanted Sunrise Farms]

Magpies will kill bantams? i know crows will kill baby birds, like other bird's babies in nests in the trees. We have a large herd of magpies in the area but they avoid our yard. i'm sure it's because of Huey, our biggest goose.

Poor cat! i don't know why some people think it's okay to dump their domesticated cat, or move away and leave them behind. There is almost never a happy ending to that story.

 

[Oregon Blues]

I do not think the crows will hurt anything. They actually will keep Hawks away.

Maybe you will be lucky and not lose birds to crows, but they have killed 2 three pound chickens and an 8 pound duck on my place, as well as taking every goose egg this spring and attacking my geese to try to drive them off their nests.

One also attacked one of my Swedish ducks, but the drakes ganged up on him and drove him off after a serious battle. There were black crow feathers all over the ground and I saw the crow flying away. So no question about the identity of the predator. Crows were caught right in the act of killing one of the chickens.

So, if your local crows have not killed chicks or stolen eggs, you have just been mighty lucky so far.