# Invasive Birds



## fsa46 (Jul 8, 2012)

With my Bluebirds having nests in a couple of my boxes and Tree Swallows and Carolina Wren in a couple others, ( a wren was killed by the sparrows before another Wren made a nest ) it was time to kill some of the invasive sparrows that kill my Bluebirds and babies. I hate these things, they break the Bluebird eggs and throw them out of the boxes and take the nest over, or just kill the Bluebirds. Those that feel bad for the sparrows, ( as read in the other post) may want to read up on the destruction they do before crying over them.

Anyway, I have a walk out basement and my bird feeder is 25' away from where I was sitting while shooting these culprits. I have a lot of these bad boys coming in this time of year and it does my heart justice sending them to the bad lands.

I happened to be using a Shuttle Craft with .040 Latex and 3/8" steel balls on these four. Whenever I get board I pop a Budweiser, go down in the basement and start having some fun.


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## Phoul Mouth (Jan 6, 2015)

I wonder how Sparrow breast meat would be for making nuggets.


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## Chuck Daehler (Mar 17, 2015)

I know nothing about birds actually...never studied up on them and didn't know that those species of invasives were so destructive of other species' nests and young... and attacking the adults as well. I'll have to retract my bleeding heart sentiments and thank you for teaching me something I really didn't know.

When my corn was being attacked in GA I took my fair share of blue jays although the birds are one of my favorite to watch because they are fairly big and really pretty. They would tear open an ear, eat a few kernals then go to the next instead of finishing off the first one...souring the whole cob of corn....I'd have to pick corn constantly even tho it could have ripened more, salvaging the torn up ears for whatever I could. It was a garden, not a field, and I'd planted some really tasty roasting ear corn to boil, roast in al foil and pickle.

Every dang morning of the week at day break a thrush (member of the woodpecker family) which is a fairly large-medium size bird bigger than a robin, would hammer on my house's gutter, usually sort of full of pine needles, foraging for insects. It was loud and woke me up every morning about an hour before I wanted to...bangbangbangboingbang and so on. One morning I got out my .22 Crosman and gave it to my wife's young son who'd been wanting to dispatch this rascal too...he put an end to that early alarm clock bird. He also got a robin which was forbidden...no prob, he plucked and shucked out the breasts and fried them with salt, pepper and bacon. and enjoyed the heck out of them.

Again, I retreat from my former stance of guardian angel of invasive birds.

That hand rifle you shot them with is quite formidable...THWACK!


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## Chuck Daehler (Mar 17, 2015)

One would prolly need many dozens to make a decent pie Phoul. A sparrow breast might be the size of a quarter... 4 and 20 black birds baked in a pie... my what a dainty dish to put before the king.

I told this story once on this forum but perhaps it's time to tell it again.

My retired navy bud here as a boy was reared by his grandparents, moonshiners and pig farmers in southern GA. In the late fall when the robbins would migrate south for the winter the trees were lousy with them...roosting side by side it was so crowded. They'd take gunny sacks at night and hold the sack open under the branch and gently just scrape the sleeping birds off which fell into the sack. Having a good many, home they went to wring their necks and souse them down in boiling water to losen the feathers so as to pluck the breast parts and shuck out the breasts..and bake robbin pies. True story. He claims they were absolutely delicious...a meat pie made of rockin' robbin.

Song for a sparrow funeral...


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## Phoul Mouth (Jan 6, 2015)

Oh I am sure it would take a lot, but I have a freezer so I can save them up. LOL.

I get so many birds in my backyard it's pretty nuts. I could sit out there and take 50 birds a day if I felt like it. Occasionally I'll take a few pidgeons since they have decent meat on them.


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## Henry the Hermit (Jun 2, 2010)

Chuck, when I was a boy, we lived beside a cemetery and every fall, Robins would roost in the trees in the cemetery. I would shoot a few with my BB gun and my mother would fry the breasts for me. I thought they were delicious.


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## Charles (Aug 26, 2010)

Robins used to be hunted for food in North America, but the practice was outlawed in 1918.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_robin

Most any grain and/or insect eating birds should be quite edible. Remember "4 and 20 black birds baked in a pie" .... Those were probably "rooks":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rook_(bird)

There are many very old illustrations of hunting a variety of birds with pellet bows, mostly for food.

http://www.fioredeiliberi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=17553&start=40

Cheers .... Charles


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## truthornothing (May 18, 2015)

Phoul Mouth said:


> Oh I am sure it would take a lot, but I have a freezer so I can save them up. LOL.
> 
> I get so many birds in my backyard it's pretty nuts. I could sit out there and take 50 birds a day if I felt like it. Occasionally I'll take a few pidgeons since they have decent meat on them.


Squab is tasty


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## fsa46 (Jul 8, 2012)

truthornothing said:


> Squab is tasty


When I was a youngster I remember a foreign family that lived next door that raised pigeons for table fare. He also raised rabbits for the same.


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## truthornothing (May 18, 2015)

One of my old bosses used to catch pigeons for the Italian population in his town to make extra money. Regarding the robins, when my great grandfather was a boy my dad told me he used to catch them for cash as well. Given the massive numbers of them I see lately may be time to open up a season. lol


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## Ibojoe (Mar 13, 2016)

Fsa46 Glad you re-posted. Didn't know if you would after being slammed by anti-hunters last time. Keep up the good work. We shouldn't have to be afraid to post things that we are proud of. Good shooting and thanks again for posting!


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## truthornothing (May 18, 2015)

Ibojoe said:


> Fsa46 Glad you re-posted. Didn't know if you would after being slammed by anti-hunters last time. Keep up the good work. We shouldn't have to be afraid to post things that we are proud of. Good shooting and thanks again for posting!


I am a predator on the top of the food chain. I will be no more ashamed of hunting than a lion is. These anti hunters kill more animals in support of their modern existence than you ever will hunting. They do not realize their own hypocrisy


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## Cjw (Nov 1, 2012)

Have have no problem with hunting but I do have a problem with new members that have barely picked up a slingshot and their all ready to hunt. More than likely just to wound the animal so it dies slowly somewhere. It's fine if you hunt to eat the animal but to kill just to kill I have no respect for . Species have been hunted to extinction for sport.
What does that leave for future generations. Still happening in Africa.

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## truthornothing (May 18, 2015)

I eat what I shoot save for the sparrows and starlings. Both are non native invasive species and out compete and threaten native species. I shoot all the starlings I can as they are a menace.


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## Alfred E.M. (Jul 5, 2014)

*When my dad was a boy, prolly around 1915, Minneapolis had a pigeon problem, so for several months it was legal to to shoot them with a twenty-two rifle. You'd be walking in your neighborhood - a double hung window would fly open, blam-blam-blam ... feathers and carcasses go to ground. Definitely thinned out the problem. *


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## Yosemite Sam (Feb 18, 2016)

Robin is the state bird of Michigan, so we can't shoot them. However I remember as a young boy living on a farm, my step-hated starlings and there were plenty around the farm. My brother & I both had Daisy BB guns, the type you fill the barrel up with BBs, and to arm it one pump from the lever, then we would shoot starlings. Same kind as the little boy in the "Christmas Story" got, and his mom kept on telling him "You'll shoot your eye out". We didn't have slingshots back then.

One of my most memorable past times was the ground squirrels, gophers, or chipmunks as we called them the little brown animals with the stripes down their back. We would walk out in the cow pasture and find one scurrying back to it's hole. We'd find the hole and just set there an wait, and within a couple of minutes, may be 5, the little bugger would stick its head out and BAM! got him.

As our BB guns got older they started to loose power. We figured out if we put a couple of drops of gasoline down the barrel, that somehow would increase the power, to the point of giving a little more "Kick" when shooting. So when we were going out for gophers, we would prep the BB gun with a little gas from the tractor supply tank.


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## Cjw (Nov 1, 2012)

Your lucky you weren't hurt . In a spring piston gun the spring pushes forward a piston which creates the air pressure to propel the bb, pellet . The temperature in the compression chamber reaches hundreds of degrees for a split second . That why they lube the guns with high temp lubes. If you put oil or gas in the barrel it causes a little explosion in the gun and the gun can be torn apart it's called dieseling.

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## Yosemite Sam (Feb 18, 2016)

Today as an adult and working in the automotive field, I now realize how dangerous that could have been. Had we told our Mom or Dad, I'm sure they would have stopped us. As kids we had no idea what could have happened. I'm just thankful nothing did.


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