On Wed, 31 Mar 2010 08:13:03 +0000, John Savage wrote:

On Mon, 15 Mar 2010 I wrote:
A local council in Sydney hatched a cunning scheme to trap hundreds of
indian mynas by throwing nets over 3 or 4 large palm trees where the
pests had taken to roosting each evening.

I see two major problems with trapping pest bird species in suburbia.
While many people might be willing to set a cage trap in their backyard,
or to allow someone else to set a trap, the need to implement a humane
execution method is a major obstacle. Setting the trap is the easy
part, for your average urban dweller killing whatever you catch on a
daily basis is another matter.

The myna trap is a cage that can accumulate quite a few birds. It needs
to sit in place fora few days for them to become accustomed to it.

Secondly, there are many animal lovers and well-meaning souls who abhor
culling or killing for any reason; you see them distributing bucketsful
of food for pigeons, mynahs, stray cats, etc. These people would be
upset at the sight (or mere thought) of birds that they feed being
trapped and killed by a neighbour. Wide-spread trapping would be a PR
nightmare.

Then they should keep their stupid moggies inside of a night as the law
requires and their dogs under control and not roaming the streets.

"John Savage" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 15 Mar 2010 I wrote:
A local council in Sydney hatched a cunning scheme to trap hundreds of
indian mynas by throwing nets over 3 or 4 large palm trees where the
pests had taken to roosting each evening.

I see two major problems with trapping pest bird species in suburbia.
While many people might be willing to set a cage trap in their backyard,
or to allow someone else to set a trap, the need to implement a humane
execution method is a major obstacle. Setting the trap is the easy
part, for your average urban dweller killing whatever you catch on a
daily basis is another matter.

Secondly, there are many animal lovers and well-meaning souls who abhor
culling or killing for any reason; you see them distributing bucketsful
of food for pigeons, mynahs, stray cats, etc. These people would be
upset at the sight (or mere thought) of birds that they feed being
trapped and killed by a neighbour. Wide-spread trapping would be a PR
nightmare.

It was to address both of these concerns, that the UK employed a bird
control program which involves two men in a van, and a long ladder. The
nimbler man climbs the ladder to access the bird's nest and each egg is
given a vigorous shaking to break up its internal membrane and ensure
it can not develop into a chick. The "scrambled" egg is then returned
to the nest and left for the birds to continue to sit on. By the time
the parent birds find that the egg is not hatching, it is too late in
the season to begin again. (Where the female does have time to lay a
second batch of eggs, I guess the men must be summoned to repeat their
procedure.) [Wondering to self: maybe early in the season it might be
better to leave the parents with one viable egg, so that in the event
of the the men being unable to return in time to destroy a second brood
of eggs, the birds would not attempt a second hatching. Raising a
single chick is still preferable to raising multiple chicks. Two to
four fledglings seems to be the norm for Indian mynahs around here.]

I can't remember which species of bird the UK program involved. Maybe
it was something like the crane. I would think that dunking the egg
into a thermos of hot water for a few mins might achieve a similar
result.

When each pair of birds is in this way consistently prevented from
reproducing, the numbers of that pest species must eventually fall.
As far as controlling our urban bird pests, authorities could provide
this as a free service to households, or they could impose a modest
charge.
--
John Savage (my news address is not valid for email)

Do we have a person trap to get owners of ferals that roam???? Would there
be an objection to them being put down??