SNAKE in the henhouse

[halo]

Wow....great snake pictures. I just released a little yellow rat snake into the woods where I work. I have bluebirds, and I also have house sparrows for the first time since Ive lived here. Since the sparrows will kill the bluebirds, I figured Id take care of the sparrows. I got this really neat sparrow trap, and caught the 3 males that were hanging out the very first day. I dispatched 2 of them, and kept one in there per instructions as a decoy, with food and water. He was in there for 3 days with no others attracted to the bait. I woke up the other morning, looked out in the barn towards the trap, and saw a little dark mound. Phooey, he must have croaked. I went out there, uh yeah, he croaked, in a snakes belly. A tiny rat snake had somehow gotten thru 1/4 inch hardware cloth, ate that darn sparrow, then couldnt get out. He was really pretty and cute, but FAT. So I took the trap to work, opened and, and give him the wide open spaces to live in, instead of my place. Besides, I figure where theres one, theres more. Thought it was pretty funny.

 

[Intheswamp]

Quote:
Good job on dispatching those mice...give the snake a medal.

European Weaver Finches (aka...house sparrows) are mice and starlings are rats. Very damaging to native songbirds...very damaging.

We do have native sparrows but the big difference is that our native sparrows are not cavity nesters but rather cup nesters...European Weaver Finches are cavity nesters. The weaver finches don't kill grown birds but *will* peck and kill chicks and eggs....they're vermin. The bad thing is that cracked corn and millet are BIG attractants to them.

Though more expensive, feeding anything other than black oil sunflower seeds as wild bird feed seems to me to asking for problems. Of course with chickens, it's kind of impossible not to attract the feathered mice...because of cracked corn, millet, etc.,.

Starlings are assasins....they will kill a full grown purple martin in it's gourd/house...literally stand over it, hold it down, and peck it to death...and then bust the eggs or kill the chicks. Evil, evil, birds. They follow the same feeding patterns as the weaver finches, though they can handle whole kernal seeds better than EWFs can.

Both of these foreign, non-native birds are not protected and are open game (can be killed at any time). If you have birdhouses, gourdracks, or whatever and starlings or weaver finches invade then the proper thing to do is trap and kill them or take the housing down.

FWIW
Ed