No, no references to Elvis' song "Suspicious Minds" here at Struan Farm, and probably not the most Christmas-y of blog posts either!
This season we have been inundated with magpies around the property. These are not native birds, in fact they were introduced from Australia (space here for some sort of kiwi joke that all bad things come from Australia....). They attack and scare off the native birds, kill their young, and have turf wars that rival the LA gangs. In Australia they have been known to dive bomb little blonde school children.
Ten or so years ago the bird wars on the farm got so bad that John went out and bought a trap, which "we" used to catch over 30 birds. At a certain point they got the message and moved on. We haven't had many problems since then, until now. So the trap has been dusted off and deployed. We've been moving it around to spots on the front lawn, in the backyard and in the Pet Paddock.
It's basically a double sided wire cage trap with mirrors. Bits of mince are left in the open doors, the birds walk in and the doors close. John and/or Mike then take them off, I won't go into the gory details on that but everything is done humanely.
So far this season we have caught thirteen, and they're still coming. I saw seven in the Pet Paddock this week, and there are still at least three around up at our house. They're meant to be reasonably intelligent birds, so they now need to figure out that they're better elsewhere so we can finish this business. Life on the farm, eh?
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