Starlings for owl and hawk food.

[Jim Gramke]

Has anyone toyed with the idea of providing starlings to owls and coopers hawks as an alternative to them eating our martins? With the large numbers being caught in v-traps this time of year, perhaps they could be offered on a B&B type platform a short distance away from the martin colony.

The first questions that arise in my mind:
1. Would they have to be kept alive to be attractive to the predators?
2. Would they attract more predators and make a bad problem worse?

Anyone having experience with this or knowledge of owl and hawk behavior, please chime in.

FYI I'm catching E.S.s in Mississippi but not in the numbers that I had hoped; dozens instead of hundreds. I think that the decoy starlings are more effective when their flight feathers are clipped off. They spend more time on the ground and less time darting around inside the trap. They seem to calm down much faster.

[Louise Chambers]

There might be problems - essentially, you would be training them to come to your location for a meal, and when it's not provided, they are there, and so are your martins.

[Jim Gramke]

Thanks Louise. That was my main concern.

In the words of Linus Pauling, "To have a [b]good[/b] idea, one must have lots of ideas."

[Emil Pampell-Tx]

Hawks will come back repeatedly to a place for food if they were successful one time..I would not encourage that at all. I would not feed them

[Jim Gramke]

Yes I know too well how persistent they can be. I have watched coops take several martins off of the perches. Owls visit frequently also.

[steve r]

Jim. I used to have a problems with owls visiting at night that was till I started playing music at night. I have a speaker installed up by the gourds then a radio hooked to a timer it comes on at dusk and goes off at dawn, it has worked for me for years, plus if I do hear one or see one a bottle rocket shot in the general direction seems to keep that bay.

[Jim Gramke]

Bottle Rockets! Good idea. Been a long time since I shot rockets at the "bad guys."

[eyeamtheman]

(laughs)
Shootin bottle rockets at em.....
AWESOME!!!

[KathyF]

Jim. I used to have a problems with owls visiting at night that was till I started playing music at night. I have a speaker installed up by the gourds then a radio hooked to a timer it comes on at dusk and goes off at dawn, it has worked for me for years, plus if I do hear one or see one a bottle rocket shot in the general direction seems to keep that bay.

I've tried music and lights, but one of his most violent attacks was when the radio and lights were on. You can see the lights are on when you look at the reflections on the gourds and the radio was on a local religious channel.
Steve, I'm curious - how did you know he quit coming around - were you monitoring somehow with game cameras or something?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8psDGf3Fg9M

[KathyF]

Jim, I had a brief, fleeting thought last year to go buy a few chickens and let him have one every few days, but then I realized that what the others are saying above is true....I'd just teach him that he could get food here.

As for hawks, I have a very quick, sharp shinned hawk that comes through my colony 2 to 3x per day during the spring. I put out 14 decoys, including 4 dove decoys around the gourd racks and nearby perches. I even put some of them on a couple of t-posts and put 3 bird feeders around the perimeter of my yard. The hawks would have to fly by / over / near the feeders to get to my colony from the wooded areas and the birds at the feeders would alert and the martins would flush. It really helped a lot. When the nestlings started to fledge, we had more issues with the hawks because the fledges weren't as wise or as skilled fliers as their parents, but still, the decoys & multiple bird feeder stations around my site really, really helped.

[steve r]

Jim. I used to have a problems with owls visiting at night that was till I started playing music at night. I have a speaker installed up by the gourds then a radio hooked to a timer it comes on at dusk and goes off at dawn, it has worked for me for years, plus if I do hear one or see one a bottle rocket shot in the general direction seems to keep that bay.

I've tried music and lights, but one of his most violent attacks was when the radio and lights were on. You can see the lights are on when you look at the reflections on the gourds and the radio was on a local religious channel.
Steve, I'm curious - how did you know he quit coming around - were you monitoring somehow with game cameras or something?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8psDGf3Fg9M

I play country music real load. I've watched an owl on the light pole at night with the birds volcalizing and was just turning his head from side to side. I have also shot my potatoe gun at them, bottom line there scared to come in my yard LOL.

[LarryMelcher/KY]

I gave my old starling trap to a falconer friend of mine. He has tried but is unsuccessful at attracting Martin's (before he got his first hawk). The trap worked at his house. He fed the hawk starlings. But as others have expressed here, it's not a good idea to combine this around a martin colony. I'd also give him the ones I caught and take them too his house. He would freeze any extras for later.

[tonyg]

So far leaving deck lights on with loud country music playing through radio has kept my area Owls away..once two years ago I blasted my 20 ga in its direction, never saw any evidence of his return..hopefully he got the message!!

[Steve Malone]

I have two game cameras set up. When an owl shows up, I get one picture of the owl landing, and right away it flies off. My cameras are set on 3 shot bursts and I think the infrared flash scares them off.

[Jim Gramke]

Good strategies. Thanks all.

[~Ray~Gingerich]

I’ve been beaming loud rock and pop music at my colony from 2 or 3 different locations and tuned to different stations, I place the radios in large square plastic buckets with the open ends pointed directly at the racks I want to protect. Sometimes if my sons landscape trailer is parked so the rack is between the trailer and the radio I adjust the angle a little and the sound will bounce off the metal trailer wall to create a reverb effect, with the different sounds bouncing around between the trailer and my house, plus the sounds crossing over each other from different directions I believe it confuses the owls and reduces the chances of an owl hanging around to pinpoint martin sounds. Another advantage of using buckets is the sounds will not radiate to the sides as much if you have close neighbors.

Jim, I've had a hawk attack a holding cage for starlings...very violent, then sat on top of the cage trying to figure out how to get at the starling.

[KathyF]

I have two game cameras set up. When an owl shows up, I get one picture of the owl landing, and right away it flies off. My cameras are set on 3 shot bursts and I think the infrared flash scares them off.

Steve, when observing the videos on my game cameras, that is one thing I consistently notice between the owl, the coyotes and the foxes I have seen - they all look right at the camera when it triggers on and then they make a dash to leave the scene.

I thought these lights were supposed to be undetectable by wildlife, but in this case with the owl, I'm glad he's seeing / hearing something click on.

[Jim Gramke]

A friend of mine has a chugger-type sprinkler head that activates from a motion detector; its purpose is to keep sandhill cranes from pecking holes in his porch screens. That would probably work well for owls at night. One would have to deactivate it during the day or the PMs would be constantly setting it off. I'll ponder that idea and see if I can come up with something workable.

[Steve Malone]

The animals are seeing the infrared flash and probably hearing the click of the camera. Deer see it because it obviously gets their attention. I've gotten several pictures of owls, but like I mentioned, they fly off right away. I've been using these for the last two years and haven't had any attacks that I have noticed.

[GregB->AR]

The flash may be infrared but you can see the lights turn to red when the game cameras flash if you watch. There is also an audible click at the same time. You can also see this red light glow on some security cameras that use infrared spot for night time recording.