Hi

Yikes - Peregrines are eating all my brothers white (fantailed?)
doves.
We could shut them indoors for a few days, but there isnt much room
and it's not a good long-term solution.

How can we stop it?


Ship
Shiperton Henethe

P.S. My granny used to have 60 similar birds, and we think sparrow
hawk at the entire lot!

P.S. Has anyone tried feeding them something weird (like kippers??) to
make their flesh taste horrible?

ship wrote:
> Hi
>
> Yikes - Peregrines are eating all my brothers white (fantailed?)
> doves.
> We could shut them indoors for a few days, but there isnt much room
> and it's not a good long-term solution.
>
> How can we stop it?

Keep Peregrines instead.

Cheers,

Phil

On Jun 2, 5:42*pm, "Phil Wilson" <philip.wil...@talk21.com> wrote:
> ship wrote:
> > Hi
>
> > Yikes - Peregrines are eating all my brothers white (fantailed?)
> > doves.
> > We could shut them indoors for a few days, but there isnt much room
> > and it's not a good long-term solution.
>
> > How can we stop it?
>
> Keep Peregrines instead.

Are you serious?
Would keeping a peregrine scare off other peregrines?

What about sticking a stuffed peregrine on the roof of the house?
Or having a loud speaker broadcasting peregrine calls at rather large
volume?


Ship

ship wrote:
> P.S. Has anyone tried feeding them something weird (like kippers??) to
> make their flesh taste horrible?

1) You might get Ospreys eating them instead (they're fish eaters)! ;-)

2) Birds aren't generally considered not to have much sense of taste, so may
not be effective.

Breed sacrificial rabbits as well/instead?

Mike.
--
If reply address is invalid, remove spurious "@" and substitute "plus"
where needed.

ship wrote:
> On Jun 2, 5:42 pm, "Phil Wilson" <philip.wil...@talk21.com> wrote:
>> ship wrote:
>>> Hi
>>
>>> Yikes - Peregrines are eating all my brothers white (fantailed?)
>>> doves.
>>> We could shut them indoors for a few days, but there isnt much
>>> room
>>> and it's not a good long-term solution.
>>
>>> How can we stop it?
>>
>> Keep Peregrines instead.
>
> Are you serious?

Half-so. This is an insoluble problem. If you let doves fly free you
are ringing the dinner bell for any wild predator capable of taking
them.

The following doesn't refer to you at all, but is just my general take
on things.

As it happens I prefer Peregrines to domestic pigeons. Short of a
practical solution to prevent any wild raptor taking a bird (netting
etc) you just have to accept that in our society there's a balance to
be struck between some people's desire to preserve wild Peregrines and
Sparrowhawks, and others equally legitimate (though more
'interventionist') desire to keep ornamental domestic birds. All I can
say is that my solution (ignore any losses) is less interventionist
than some others' (persecute wild raptors). Anyway Peregrines are
mostly confined to less-populated areas (that the opposite impression
is sometimes got is because those that aren't become newsworthy). The
numbers overall lost to Peregrines of pigeons from lofts will
therefore be relatively tiny, compared with the pigeon population as a
whole (most Peregrines don't feed exclusively on domestic birds). I
know this is not likely to make you feel any better, but it doesn't
make me feel a lot worse.

What I do feel is wrong is that human gambling (which, though pigeon
fanciers claim to be 'fond' of their birds, could be carried out in
any particular form) should cause our native wildlife to disappear.
This approach seems lacking in that balance that I was talking about.

But, as I say, it's often an impasse between two mutually exclusive
points of view.

The serious half of my half-joke was that I can't understand why
people like 'keeping' birds, anyway. If you don't race them for momey,
sorry...sport,, what do you get from them, that you couldn't get from
a wild bird? I just don't understand the need to 'possess' living
things, unless you're going to kill them and eat them afterward. I
can't understand the whole 'pets' thing anyway. It's one thing to have
animals about, quite another to want to live with them, talk to them
and provide them with 'personalities they neither have nor could have.
Some people talk to dogs as if they were human.

Does that make things any clearer?

Cheers,

Phil

"ship" <shiphen@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:9e89e947-7f90-4033-a9fc-0bf1e934f6b1@25g2000hsx.googlegroups.com...
On Jun 2, 5:42 pm, "Phil Wilson" <philip.wil...@talk21.com> wrote:
> ship wrote:
> > Hi
>
> > Yikes - Peregrines are eating all my brothers white (fantailed?)
> > doves.
> > We could shut them indoors for a few days, but there isnt much room
> > and it's not a good long-term solution.
>
> > How can we stop it?
>
> Keep Peregrines instead.

Are you serious?
Would keeping a peregrine scare off other peregrines?

What about sticking a stuffed peregrine on the roof of the house?
Or having a loud speaker broadcasting peregrine calls at rather large
volume?


That would probably scare away any wild pigeons, perhaps making the falcons
more likely to prey on the domesticated doves.

On Jun 2, 7:51*pm, "BAC" <cassw...@NOSPAMdircon.co.uk> wrote:
> "ship" <ship...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:9e89e947-7f90-4033-a9fc-0bf1e934f6b1@25g2000hsx.googlegroups.com...
> On Jun 2, 5:42 pm, "Phil Wilson" <philip.wil...@talk21.com> wrote:
>
> > ship wrote:
> > > Hi
>
> > > Yikes - Peregrines are eating all my brothers white (fantailed?)
> > > doves.
> > > We could shut them indoors for a few days, but there isnt much room
> > > and it's not a good long-term solution.
>
> > > How can we stop it?
>
> > Keep Peregrines instead.
>
> Are you serious?
> Would keeping a peregrine scare off other peregrines?
>
> What about sticking a stuffed peregrine on the roof of the house?
> Or having a loud speaker broadcasting peregrine calls at rather large
> volume?
>
> That would probably scare away any wild pigeons, perhaps making the falcons
> more likely to prey on the domesticated doves.

I'm not completely convinced by any of the arguments here.
One thing I should explain is that the doves live in a courtyard
and are quite tame. Therein could lie their one chance. The peregrines
are extremely shy - albeit determined. Hence something like loud
speakers
might well scare off the peregrines. Afterall the peregrine nest is a
few miles away
and there would be plenty other food nearer them.

Also have you ever tried eating chickens that have been fed kippers?
They and their eggs taste disgusting - so I reckon it's worth a shot.
A long-shot I agree. But all these doves are very distinctive - and if
the peregrine came to associate white doves with rather a nasty
breakfast you never know - it might encourage it to better tasting
food.

As to the ideas that peregrines have poor taste - does anyone here
KNOW this for a fact? I do know that they die if they eat just rabbit.
Perhaps someone from alt.falconry could comment...

Ship

Phil Wilson wrote:
> The serious half of my half-joke was that I can't understand why
> people like 'keeping' birds, anyway. If you don't race them for momey,
> sorry...sport,, what do you get from them, that you couldn't get from
> a wild bird? I just don't understand the need to 'possess' living
> things, unless you're going to kill them and eat them afterward. I
> can't understand the whole 'pets' thing anyway. It's one thing to have
> animals about, quite another to want to live with them, talk to them
> and provide them with 'personalities they neither have nor could have.
> Some people talk to dogs as if they were human.

I remember being quite fond of our family budgie, cantankerous sod though it
was. It certainly couldn't be "petted", though it was prepared to be social
on its own terms.

And I gather that it is well established that pettable creatures are good
for people especially if solitary or handicapped in some way. (Sorry, that's
the people not the pets!) So dogs are taken into hospitals. I know people
that keep decorative fish, but suspect that they would be equally happy with
an HD animation on their TV...

Talking to animals is cathartic, too. I find it quite natural to chat to
"my" Robin while dishing out its mealworms. Sad?

Mike.
--
If reply address is invalid, remove spurious "@" and substitute "plus"
where needed.

"ship" <shiphen@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:de4065be-3478-4989-ba2e-677a236a0688@y38g2000hsy.googlegroups.com...
> Hi
>
> Yikes - Peregrines are eating all my brothers white (fantailed?)
> doves.
> We could shut them indoors for a few days, but there isnt much room
> and it's not a good long-term solution.
>
> How can we stop it?

I don't think you can, unless your brother builds an aviary for them and
keeps them in there for a while. Maybe if he did it for a few months the
peregrines might stop coming for an easy meal and he could try letting them
out again.
It's a very similar scenario when a fox discovers free range chickens. They
just come back and back and back until they are all gone, and why wouldn't
they? Beats bothering their ar** to hunt anyday. It's about easy
targets..
I don't have quite as much of a problem here about fox/chickens as I can
legally kill foxes should I choose to, but peregrines/doves is an entirely
different thing because of it being illegal to kill peregrines.

I hope your brother finds a solution.

Tina