What a beautiful picture - I love raptors. I'm resigned to them here - I'd never want to shoot one. We have everything from eagles to small, pigeon sized falcons . . . they are gorgeous and wonderful to watch. Plus, we never have a large mouse/rat problem, and I would far rather have the hawks than mice and rats . . .
I've not lost a bird to them, but I am resigned to the possibility. My ducks always run undercover when they see a raptor (sometimes when they see seagulls, herons, or pigeons, so they need to work on their bird identification
) I always have the coop near trees where the birds can get under cover -- in the spring they are near the apple orchard, and in the winter they are near a big stand of thick evergreens. The coop itself is on wheels and they can get under it as well.
I also think the chickens, ducks and geese watch out for each other. The ducks respond to the roosters alarm call, and so do the geese. In addition the 9 geese in a group seem to intimidate the larger raptors. The geese and ducks will clump (since the ducklings were raised with the geese) when there is a raptor. In the spring, several times a small falcon would chase the chickens through the orchard trees, but with the rooster alarm calling, the geese honking, and the ducks following it to see what it was (they REALLY need to work on the bird identification
) it was too flustered to attack a chicken. That happened two or three times when most of the geese were younger and I'd just put the chickens into the orchard area. Now, I don't know why it stopped. . . maybe it knew it couldn't get them, or was tired of the alarm, or there was just a bigger mouse/rat population then and it had plenty of food.
One thing I would do is start putting birdseed out for wild birds somewhere in your backyard. The wild birds here will mob the raptors spring through fall -- and if you have crows or ravens they do an even better job. They also have inflatable owls, this holographic tape thing, and the netting would work too.
If it comes back a lot, and you keep getting pictures, you can try local pest control agencies. My husband worked at a seafood plant, and they would come and trap/deal with the seagulls to keep the population down - but individual people weren't allowed to shoot the gulls. I also read in the newspaper that the large international airport would contact a local falconer to come and get hawks that they trapped near their runway -- they were a danger to the planes, so they relocated them to a more rural to keep them out of the way. So they do relocate them sometimes, but possibly only when it is large corporate or city issues.
Good luck and thanks for sharing the pictures!
Was the test difficult?
