#*###* Magpies

[Eoink]

Brewed Friday night and left the 'brew in a bag' full of spent grain in a bucket outside the back door. On Saturday morning I found magpies had ripped my nylon bag apart to get at the grain.
I'm planning revenge

[LordEoin]

time to zero the scope...

[Ciderhead]

Larsen trap, they are pretty easy to make and the most effective.
Only problem is like I was last summer you will spend the week wringing necks.
I was reading about a woman in Dublin last year went to court for culling 17 in a day!
They are fiercely territorial and all you are doing is population control as neighbouring magpies will merge into your neighbourhood.

[delzep]

I thought this would have been from an angry Manchester United fan 

[Eoink]

Unfortunately we have very strict laws here about discharging firearms in residential areas  so it will have to be a larson trap borrowed from the local gunclub,
17 in one day - that woman deserves a medal.

[Will_D]

What are they like to eat?

[Eoink]

What are they like to eat?

Roast magpie with spent grain stuffing anyone?

[Shanna]

Hi there

Rather than trying kill wild birds why not just buy a bucket with a sealable lid. That way you can leave the stuff outside safely.

Larson traps are illegal in a lot of counties (including Denmark where the inventor is from) and I suspect anybody seeing you use them will not think any better of you. Trapping wild birds when a simple solution will foil them would strike me as preferrable. As a rule I would not leave grain outside like this as the next visitors might be four legged brown furry beasties that will ignore Larson traps

Shanna

[Ciderhead]

@Shanna you have a different view if you lived in the boonies, they have no natural predators and cleaned out every song bird I had around me.
I personally watched them harvest a blackbirds nest.
What is allowed in those countries is shooting and poisioning. Even though I have a gun they are impossible to shoot and I am not a fan of poisioning as both a missed shot and poision are potentially slow deaths and will impact on what eats them.

@Will Scrawny and not much meat and they eat all sorts of shit so I didn't bother, their mates didn't have a problem eating them though.

[DEMPSEY]

Starve the cat for a few days. Cures rodent issues.

Sent from my U9200 using Tapatalk 2

Cats are afraid of Magpies. At least the 2 we have and had.

[Eoin]

You could talk to Ditch over on Jims beer kit and ask him, he's a rat catcher and all around pest guy who lives up in Leitrim, English traveller and a nice guy.

[LordEoin]

trapping or shooting them is fine. poisoning is not.

[Billythegypsy]

You could talk to Ditch over on Jims beer kit and ask him, he's a rat catcher and all around pest guy who lives up in Leitrim, English traveller and a nice guy.

Ditch is real?

I always just assumed he was some sort of Tyler Durden of homebrewing.

Have you met him?

[Shanna]

@Shanna you have a different view if you lived in the boonies, they have no natural predators and cleaned out every song bird I had around me.
I personally watched them harvest a blackbirds nest.
What is allowed in those countries is shooting and poisioning. Even though I have a gun they are impossible to shoot and I am not a fan of poisioning as both a missed shot and poision are potentially slow deaths and will impact on what eats them.

@Will Scrawny and not much meat and they eat all sorts of shit so I didn't bother, their mates didn't have a problem eating them though.

Hi CH,

I knew when I wrote this that I was going to get the "its different in the country argument" rolled out. I am not anti hunting, fishing etc. I understand that crows, magpies are perceived as vermin (have relatives who keep sheep and regularly shoot them) and do kill song birds but then again cats also do. Cats also regularly kill all types of birds, mamals smaller than them and people are not advocating killing them. My understanding is that magpies do have predators including cats, foxes and dogs who will kill and eat them if they can catch them.

The larson traps are notorious for being cruel as people forget to check them regularly and like snares whatever is trapped in them struggles when caught and often will maim or kill itself to get out.

Leaving aside the perception of cruelty my point out bucket with a lid still stands (kiss).

CH would agree with you that I would never consider eating a magpie, just too much effort for very little return ;-)

Shanna

[irish_goat]

Go to a local restaurant, chippy, bakery etc and get yourself a 15litre plastic tub (mayonnaise, ketchup, spices, oil etc all come in these). They'll not peck into that.