Little parasites get in to the secondary chicken Gulag to eat her food. Not only that, they try to take over the bluebird boxes too. I'm on a mission this year to get as many as I can.
25 long paces from the back door to where this on was perched. I have to open the door in stealth mode, slide the pellet rifle barrel out, and shoot from inside. Bugs the crap out of the wife sitting on the couch with a dog on her lap, while watching her shows. But I told her, I want as many dead this year as I can get. When it warms up I can sit out on the back deck and shoot them.
The desert is a true treasure for him who seeks refuge from men and the evil of men. In it is contentment In it is death and all you seek (Quoted from "The Bleeding of the Stone" Ibrahim Al-Koni)
Brings back memories. When I was a teen, we had ducks and chickens. Starlings and grackles would swoop in and gobble up their feed. I made a "blind" with burlap feed sacks, and would sit there after school with my Remington .22 smoothbore, taking them on the wing. The occasional rat would get his dose, as well.
In Ted's Holdover Youtube channel he shows how starlings kill other birds. They grab the other bird's beak in their foot while pecking the other to death.
Go to 3:55 in the video
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self. -Ernest Hemingway The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.-- Edward John Phelps
I'm with you. I just finished sighting in my new Ruger .177 pellet rifle at 1000 inches. I should be able to get head shots since I am shooting from a sniper position, inside my cracked open kitchen window, at about 180 inches to my bird feeders.
"All that the South has ever desired was that the Union, as established by our forefathers, should be preserved, and that the government, as originally organized, should be administered in purity and truth." – Robert E. Lee
This winter is the first time I ever had starlings at my bird feeders. Not many, but 1 is too many. Got 2 so far with my Gamo pellet rifle. Always on the lookout for them now.
God bless Texas----------------------- Old 300 I will remain what i am until the day I die- A HUNTER......Sitting Bull Its not how you pick the booger.. but where you put it !! Roger V Hunter
Several years ago I read about a farmer whose stock feed was getting swarmed by these birds. I don’t recall how he set it up but a live circuit was set up to entice them to rest above the feed area. A switch was set up so that he could see when the wire had a significant number of birds on it. He’d complete the circuit and lay them low. I’d like to operate the switch on such a setup.
We don't get all that many in the winter. Our problem is nesting season when I can't keep them out from under the hoods of the cars. I have to leave all the hoods open for a month to keep them out. They don't like an open air nest.
“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” ― George Orwell
It's not over when you lose. It's over when you quit.
Little parasites get in to the secondary chicken Gulag to eat her food. Not only that, they try to take over the bluebird boxes too. I'm on a mission this year to get as many as I can.
25 long paces from the back door to where this on was perched. I have to open the door in stealth mode, slide the pellet rifle barrel out, and shoot from inside. Bugs the crap out of the wife sitting on the couch with a dog on her lap, while watching her shows. But I told her, I want as many dead this year as I can get. When it warms up I can sit out on the back deck and shoot them.
they started showing up at the feeder this winter. but when i shot at one with my blue streak, it went pffft and the pellet bounced off the post below it. guess i need to figure out how to put new seals in it. i can't safely shoot them in that direction with a 22. i wonder what cci bird shot is going for? 2 bucks a pop probably.
Starlings are common enough around here, but when I was cycling around Montana summer of ‘19 I was bummed to see so many starlings on fields and pastures with broods of fledged young.
What makes starlings deadly to native songbirds in fights is that they have long, strong legs for running on the ground and perching feet that grasp. That and they feed by jamming their beak into the dirt and grass roots and then opening the beak a little to look for insects so exposed. So they have a strong pointed beak with eyes placed to look right down the beak where they’re hitting. Pairs even team up to rob woodpeckers of their nesting cavities.
In the absence of starlings we have cavity-nesting tree swallows, purple martins and bluebirds. Over in the Old World the swallows build their own mud nests (the ancestors of our own barn and cliff swallows) and their bluebird-equivalent, the Eurasian Robin (about the size of our bluebirds) likewise build their own nest, avoiding competition with starlings.
"...if the gentlemen of Virginia shall send us a dozen of their sons, we would take great care in their education, instruct them in all we know, and make men of them." Canasatego 1744
We have them on the farm by the hundreds, and I only have seven or eight bricks of 22's left. Somewhere in the safe is a Beeman R9 20 cal that needs sighted in....... Wonder if all the pellets are gone from the stores, too?