At one feed lot, some 200,000 starlings gathered each day, lining fence tops, wires, water troughs and even perching on top of cows. They've learned to steal the most nutritious morsels from the cattle troughs and pose an ever-present threat of moving disease from one ranch to another, said Roger Woodruff, director of Wildlife Services in Washington.
Nearly 650,000 starlings were poisoned last year in the state, an all-time record, he said.
SHOOT: Fascinating story this. The most effective way to control these starlings, I'd argue, is to introduce their natural enemies. I image these are snakes, and hawks, and possibly cats. Of course, the natural enemies of snakes and hawks [peregrine falcons etc] and in some cases cats, are human beings. In which case, either we must learn to live with nature or take up the habit of whining.
Had the Bard not mentioned the starling in the third scene of "Henry IV," arguably the most hated bird in North America might never have arrived. In the early 1890s, about 100 European starlings were released in New York City's Central Park by a group dedicated to bringing to America every bird ever mentioned by Shakespeare.
Today, it's more like Hitchcock.
Some 200 million shiny black European starlings crowd North America, from the cool climes of Alaska to the balmy reaches of Mexico's Baja peninsula. The enormous flocks endanger air travel, mob cattle operations, chase off native songbirds, roost on city blocks, leaving behind corrosive, foul-smelling droppings and hundreds of millions of dollars of damage each year.
And getting rid of them is near impossible.
They're also responsible for the most deadly bird strikes in aviation: a 1960 civilian crash in Boston that killed 62 and a 1996 military cargo plane crash that killed 34 in the Netherlands |
clipped from news.yahoo.com
No comments:
Post a Comment