I received by email today an alert about an article describing actions of the government animal-control agency known as Wildlife Services. The service it provides is control of wild animals -- including birds -- said to be damaging crops or livestock. It brought to mind a story I did some years ago about attempts to lessen the impact of fall migrant blackbirds on sunflower crops in the Dakotas and Minnesota.
The current story, from Harper’s magazine can be found line at http://tinyurl.com/jbnflcg It is an unpleasant read. My story concerned those migrant blackbirds coming through the Dakotas and northwestern Minnesota, eating sunflower seeds as they moved on. Farmers used — and probably still use — noise-makers (periodic loud booms) among other strategies to discourage the birds. None of those strategies worked well — and probably still don't. The suggestion made by Wildlife Services, that fueled my story, was to scatter poisoned grain along migrant paths. The blackbirds theoretically would eat the grain and die. Unfortunately, Wildlife Services meant to do this in the spring, hoping to reduce breeding blackbird populations that would in turn reduce predation in the fall. In addition, no consideration was given to the by-product deaths of other grain-eating birds, of which there would have been many of several species. This eventually was seen as the stupid idea it was. It was not implemented. Jim Williams Wayzata, Minnesota birding blog at http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/homegarden/blogs/Wingnut.html ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
