How to dispose of trapped sparrow.

[James Johnson]

Tail clipping is an excellent option for public sites. I might have to resort to it myself when the 2 public sites go up at the banks - although this IS southern Missouri, where most people aren't quite that squeamish. But time will tell.
The only things to remember about tail-clipping: 1) Their tails will grow back when they molt next year

Kathy, you, John, and Scully have won me over to tail clipping. However, the squeamish at both public and private sights are going to scream bloody murder if we clip, clamp, wring, suffocate, stomp. or feed to rover. The purpose is to remove a consistent threat to Martin survival. Tail clipping appears to be a great technique as long as it is executed quickly with great skill and sharp scissors," RIGHT BEHIND THE EARS". The tail will not grow back. Problem solved!

[Emil Pampell-Tx]

At a public site, why not tell a little white lie, mislead, etc., seems like our politicians lie all the time, it should be ok for a birdlover to tell a little white lie. Put the sparrows in a box, tell any onlookers that you will release them a few miles away. Then when you get home, kill them and release them to the garbage pail.

[KathyF]

At a public site, why not tell a little white lie, mislead, etc., seems like our politicians lie all the time, it should be ok for a birdlover to tell a little white lie. Put the sparrows in a box, tell any onlookers that you will release them a few miles away. Then when you get home, kill them and release them to the garbage pail.

That's a great plan - "Sir - I'm going to release them in a better spot further out in the country. They'll love it there!"

[KathyF]

Kathy, you, John, and Scully have won me over to tail clipping. However, the squeamish at both public and private sights are going to scream bloody murder if we clip, clamp, wring, suffocate, stomp. or feed to rover. The purpose is to remove a consistent threat to Martin survival. Tail clipping appears to be a great technique as long as it is executed quickly with great skill and sharp scissors," RIGHT BEHIND THE EARS". The tail will not grow back. Problem solved!

James, just to clarify my stance - I practice cervical dislocation on all trapped sparrows at my private site and all my mentee's sites. I have a personal vendetta against HSOP - the sparrows are put to death. I am only ok with tail-clipping at public sites, where the environment is not conducive to killing a bird, however Emil's suggestion is a good one that I think I will use. And Yes, their tail DOES grow back next year.

[JamesinIA]

I was wondering if you could just put the trapped sparrows in a holding cage and if anyone asked you could tell them that you were taking them several miles away to release them. That way they won't be trying to nest in the martin housing anymore. You don't have to tell them you are releasing them into a garbage bag.

[Scully]

Telling fibs about exactly what you do with your trapped sparrows prob'ly wont get you arrested anywhere on this side of The Pond

However it does become difficult to routinely tell even little white lies to kids you see every school day, especially when you are encouraging habitual truthfullness on their part.

Whether the concept of releasing a handful of clipped sparrows has any meaningful effect on the population... that falls under the area of "Population Dynamics"....

Suffice to say, here in Texas about three to four million mourning doves are legally blown out of the sky with shotguns each Fall. Doesn't seem to impact continuing populations any, and mouring doves don't raise nearly as many babies as house sparrows do.

"Carrying Capacity" has a lot to do with numbers, and is the reason the Earth isn't actually buried knee-deep in house sparrows or cockroaches or anything else. If we clip ten offending sparrows a year, and those sparrows remain around campus as they generally seem to do, that makes ten "sparrow slots" around here taken up by non-propagating sparrows that will NOT bother our gourds.

Will the surviving five (about half of all sparrows die each year, just like martins) bother the gourds next year?

Dunno. If they have, none so far have proven at all hard to trap.

Mike Scully




Mike Scully

[Louise Chambers]

This is kind of a different thread, but I am in my second year of managing a public site here. I never trap or remove house sparrows in front of the general public - people need to be educated about what's going on and why, first - and even then, I would not do it with an audience. Most folks would not know HOSP (or starlings) are introduced and very detrimental to native cavity nesters like bluebirds, martins, woodpeckers, tree swallows, cliff swallows - plus barn swallows.'

While I won't remove house sparrows in front of them, I will tell them, if they ask, that we are not going to allow house sparrows to nest at the site. All I tell them is they will be evicted. They respond to information - such as hosp can nest without a martin house, martins can't. Martins raise one brood a year, hosp raise 3 or 4. Hosp peck martin eggs and toss out nestlings. Give them that information, and that's enough.

I personally prefer not to say they'll be released elsewhere - but if I sense zero interest in martins, I might. I would not want to pass on the myth that releasing them elsewhere is okay as a management practice. I will tell them that removing nests, eggs, and adult hosp is legal since they are not native and protected.

Each public site, and each observer, may require a slight variation on what managers are comfortable sharing. But I have found that people generally respond well to learning more. I totally understand why Mike Scully's school colony is best managed with tail clipping, and why each site manager has to decide what they will do and say about hosp. It's not as easy as managing our home sites, but it's very rewarding to introduce the public to martins.

[GeneP]

Then..someone brought up the thing about sparrows not being natives. Another worker from the center, a person of Native American heritage, remarked that white people are not natives either.

John M

I've read this same comment in other bird forums to which I say:

Yes, and I hope someone would be sure to eliminate them if they didn't stop harming natives. Humans, hopefully, can be taught. Starlings and House Sparrows, not so much.

It isn't bad to be a non native, it's a problem because native birds haven't evolved to coexist with house sparrows and starlings. And so far, the non-natives have the upper hand.

We can blame man all day but that won't cure the problem. We have to decide what we'll do. Louise is right, education is the first thing to do. But the comment above shouldn't be ignored when you hear it or read it in forums. Better to address the statement politely. A chance to educate.

I don't think anyone here takes any joy in the method we use in eliminating these two species. It's the hope we're doing more good than bad.

As far as public or private sites, I get it. But I would hope that private landlords not pass this problem on to neighboring landlords. I don't need anymore hosp or starlings.

[John Miller]

One thing...if a martin colony is thriving with martins, one can keep the sparrow nests pulled several times a week and martins usually can claim all the cavities early in the season. It may help too, as Bernie Nikolai has described, to pull sparrow nests and leave their eggs smashed on the bare floor. It at least sometimes causes the female sparrow to abandon, and helps martins move in -- again, if the colony is robust. I hope to experiment with the egg smashing technique again this year. But I'd be careful with sparrow egg removal after martins start laying their own eggs..it does incite male house sparrow revenge. One should try to get sparrows eliminated early in the season.

John M

[Vern1]

Greetings,
I own a paintball field and have access to CO2 in various containers.
I use a plastic bag to block the entrance, put the hose in there and turn it on for a few seconds, wait for the kicking and scratching to stop, then remove dead bird.

No, he's just sleeping...honestly!

[Louise Chambers]

Mike Scully's article in the winter issue of Update gave an excellent picture of how house sparrows affect martins. He observed that removing hosp nests once they have nestlings leads to sparrow rage, a good reminder that removal pre eggs is best, while removal after hosp have nestlings is very destructive to martins.

Anyone who removes hosp nest with young should be actively working to remove their parents, too. Private sites, that's not a problem.

[zoefluf]

GOT HIM! Saw him sitting on the porch of the Troyer this morning around 8 a.m. I was worried cause I had a meeting and had to leave by 8:30. I resigned myself to the fact that it wasn't going to happen today. Then, when I went out to take the trap out before I left (I wouldn't want any PMs getting trapped in there while I was gone) and VOILA - the trap was sprung! Oh, the joy! I couldn't believe my eyes. There on the picnic table sat all of my supplies (large sturdy opague bag, tape, scissors, Starter Fluid), just waiting for this moment.

I was in a hurry so I didn't have time to be squeamish. All went very well and the little Romeo has crossed over the Rainbow Bridge. I hope to sent his girlfriend to him real soon.
Jeanne

Hmmm, I'm wondering though, since I won't be home tomorrow to trap her, should I leave the gourd down off the rack and maybe she will go away or put it back up so she can continue to think things are going well and continue to build up her nest. There are so many PMs fighting to get into my colony (Isn't that great!) that I'm afraid I might trap one of the new arrivals.

[Emil Pampell-Tx]

Quite often the female will not come back if you trap the male. If you trap the female first, the male will keep bringing females over.

[James Johnson]

LOUISE, YOU ARE SUCH A DIPLOMATE . You always seem to say the right things at the right time. That's why we love you bunches.

[bbillyc]

I agree with kathy F as that has been my experience also. They just don't go away. Even tail clipping assures that you will have a bird that can mate again in another location after it has molted and it either comes back to haunt you or just bugs the heck out of someone else. They are not indigenous species here in North America and are out competing cavity nesting birds. The more we prevent Hosps and Starlings from mating now and into the future the better off all cavity nesting species in North America will be, and the more likely you will be able to attract more PM's. I've heard it said on this site and others that if you cannot manage the ugly side of the hobby by eliminating Hosps and Starlings then you shouldn't be in the hobby. I have witnessed Hosps kill tree swallows in my backyard so that is testimony to their aggressiveness. Each landlord must manage their own site as they will but if you permit the Hosps and Starlings to nest in the house all of the work you have done to attract the PM's will be for nothing and they will eventually leave.

[KathyF]

Jeanne, if it was me, I would take the trap out and put the gourd back up and let her continue until you have time to trap her. Meanwhile, she'll probably draw another male to your site. Catch her as quick as you can.

It has been my experience that the female won't leave. YMMV

[Scully]

Mike Scully's article in the winter issue of Update gave an excellent picture of how house sparrows affect martins. He observed that removing hosp nests once they have nestlings leads to sparrow rage, a good reminder that removal pre eggs is best, while removal after hosp have nestlings is very destructive to martins.

Ah the spring of 2008 and the neglected houses, we pulled all sparrow nests once each week:

20 sparrow nests pulled from six neglected houses on April 11th....

...more than 200 pulled sparrow nests later...

...18 sparrow nests pulled on June 6th from those exact same houses....

Cornell says that house sparrows will replace nests up to eight times in a row, I believe we had a couple of sparrow pairs that beat that.

But its important to note here, most of these pulled nests had not even been in place long enough to contain any eggs, let alone young.

We were triggering catastrophic (to the martins) sparrow rage by pulling nests even before any sparrow eggs and young were present.

In the following two years when we left the sparrows alone after an initial clean out, martin survival in those houses rose dramatically.

It appears that here in the South at least, about nine out of ten martin pairs out there are breeding alongside sparrows in neglected housing and have been maintaining their present numbers under those conditions.

Unfortunately, me stating this easily-observable fact is generally construed around here to be a diatribe against controlling sparrows, which it is not.

What our data DOES suggest is that merely pulling sparrow nests without trapping out the sparrows responsible can make your housing completely untenable to martins.

Mike Scully

[Carlton]

Kathy,

I had exactly the same experience as you did. I think she went through three males before I got her too. She was very crafty and refused to be caught. She would see that the male was caught and fly off in a panic only to return that evening. She would have another male by noon the next day!

[zoefluf]

Yall were right. She's back! Oh well, here we go again.
Jeanne

[KathyF]

I'm very curious and open to suggestions about working with public sites as I have 2 going up in the next month, one that I'll monitor, and the other that I'm hoping to find a mentee to monitor as it's almost an hour away. As I read everyone's posts that currently manage public sites, I completely understand and can see how dealing with sparrows and people under those circumstances is going to be a tricky 'public relations' issue. And these public sites belong to a bank, so the owner is going to be sensitive to his customers' input.

So, here's what I'm thinking:
1st scenario - audience present: Educate the audience, if asked, then you could clip the tail feathers and one wing's primary flight feathers. That would keep them from breeding AND mostly on the ground. Con: you're going to have to deal with someone that complains that you're just making them easy prey.

2nd scenario - no audience present: throw them in a holding trap in your car, take them home & humanely dispose of them.

4 years ago, I would have never dreamed of killing a small bird. It broke my heart. Amazing how your attitude can change when you want to protect something as if they were your children.