Can you spot what I was taking a picture of? Once you see it...

Uggh them birds piss me off!!! Errrrrr...

RC

Uh, You were close enough this time!!! You were shooting with the wrong type of equipment. Just kidding of course.

Where it is at, it looks like one of those bought yard ornaments.

I have finally give up on running them off. Oh, if I am around outside on the 4 wheeler I will harrass them a little, but mostly I leave them alone. I now have a mother and two younguns. Probably gaining strength so they are strong enough to migrate.

Early on I did not want to loose the fish I stocked. Now if they would take a few hundred BG they would probably be doing me a favor. So I am not as agressive at trying to run them off.

I may eventually regret it if they decide to make my place a Herron retreat.

I don't think they could hurt the population much at all .... Cormorants and water turkey are a lot worse

The problem with those birds is they like to try and eat waaaaaaay more than they can... I have had 9 inch BG with gashes in them I've seen dead 3 and 4 pound bass on the shore with a big ole hole in them.... It's not about the small fish they eat. It's about the big one your been managing for 4 years now and in one strike it's dead....

To me that would be like me going on a deer hunt somewhere killing a nice 8 point but it's really not what I wanted and walk away and leave it there... just ticks me off them birds.... They do a lot more damage then you think. Specially at spawning time when fish are in shallow water on beds... I think that's why I cant catch any of my bigger RES I think there in fish heaven now..... Errrrrrrrr

RC

RC51 that is what they are doing. They must be getting ready to head south. We have not seen them all year and now every morning. There is another that is even bigger than this one. I took this picture from the front porch of my house.

We have found two over 13" perch dead and too big for them to eat. You are correct their eyes are bigger then their throat. I caught on to them. It seams I have not been keeping up with my feeders timer with the sun setting sooner and they are picking off the perch when they are feeding in the dark.

Now I have the timer set correct and there is some day light left when it gos off. We have the sun setting around 7:40pm now. I think they are dropping in early in the morning and late are night when we can't see them.

yep. I was fishing the other night and this guy walked up on me.

That is interesting. I have seen them often at sunset but did not realize they would fish after it gets dark.

We have rookeries every year in a big tree around Cow Creek which crosses a corner of our land. All I have seen spring and summer has been one or two adults. Then about a month ago two chicks which are about half body size started showing up with mom.

I'm no expert on their migration but I suspect the chicks are putting on pounds before they fly south for the winter.

I wonder if they just strike at anything that moves, size indifferent. Then once they kill it they see if they can eat it. If you do a search on youtube and watch some of the video's I was amazed at the size of the fish they could eat. I suspect they could eat the fish you found dead but the reason they did not was after the strike the fish got away and then later died.

Edit: Well maybe not a 4# bass. But they can eat pretty big fish.

The one 13" perch was on the bank when we found it. Just going to head out there now and see if they left any from last night.

Yeah the birds I swear piss me off don't get me started.... I feel like farmers kinda with the coyotes... If there killing my animals that I got a lot of money tied into I should have the right as a pond owner to do what I fricken need to do to stop this crap!! Ughhh....

# fustrated

Dono, I'm still trying to figure out why you're not concerned about the dead polar bear just left the feeder.

I was never good at Highlights.

LOL that's funny it does kinda look like one with it's feet up in the air.... Good call Fire!!

RC

Okay, I don't get it. We have ponds because we want to create a nice environment right? I understand getting rid of cormorants because they are so destructive, but one GBH, how much can it eat? I leave the one GBH I have from time to time alone. I figure he is part of the system. FYI I leave a lot more turtles in the pond now as well. I might regret these decisions, but for now that is the way I see it. Natural.

That's what I thought too, last year. I had 200 HSB in a cage that I was raising to sell in the fall. I'd see a GBH on the pier once in a while and didn't think much of it.

But, when I went to deliver the first order for the HSB and only had 24 left in the cage my thoughts changed.....

I had the lightweight "bird netting" on the top of the cage and I could see where something tore the netting in two places.

HF they can eat a lot buddy!! And wont stop!! Day, night whenever your not around.... When your fish are spawning in the shallow that's when they do their most destruction IMO. The fish wont leave it's bed and then it's dead. And all the babies on the bed die.... So really how many fish is that one bird killing???? Not to mention the nasty parasites they carry around in their mouth and A$$.... Ughh I rank the GBH right up their close to otters, dam destructive birds....

IMO

RC

Too funny... I see it now. Thats our fishing log. All the big perch get caught off that just off the brush pile.

I don't mind a bird grabbing a meal but the GBH are like deadbeat relatives who show up and eat you out of house and home. I watch a King Fisher grab a meal out of my front pond every morning. He catches one and then leaves. A GBH will stand there catching fish all day if he can get by with it. They must have a heck of a digestion system. I have found that aggravating them enough for a few days will make them decide to fish elsewhere.

I did not realize that the obesity problem had spread to wild birds. How will they migrate?

I used to aggravate them, but now I let em' be. I can't tell they have impacted the fishery.

The big bugger was back this afternoon. He spooks easy so hes not one I really need to worry about. The little one that drops in now he won't spook easy.

I had a GBH 8 or so years ago that was at my front pond every time I came home. The pond is only about 30 feet from our front porch. At first he would fly off when I pulled in the drive but I never bothered him so he got braver and just stayed. One day I came home and he was on our front porch. I figured that was enough and walked around the front of the house to scare him off. He raised his wings real high and came off the porch after me. He was pretty intimidating and sent me back around the house. I got to thinking what might happen if one of our little grandkids ran into him and decided he had to go. Ever since, I run them off until they don't come back.

There is one that hangs @ my place and will take off as soon as he hears or see me coming. Am pretty sure he returns as soon as I leave. What about the big white ones that hang at my place? They are there everyday also. I never expected so many birds would take up @ my place. I would not mind so much if it were Mallards or some other type of duck, because I could get in some shooting and something to eat. I don't think the heron is very tasty from what I hear.

Tracy

Yeah mine is the same way. He used to spook pretty easy even on the other side of the pond he would take off if you went out there and yelled at him. Now he can be half way to the cabin and he still won't take off. He doesn't much care for the loud M60 firecrackers we have tho that we send off across the pond in a sling shot... lol

That usually keeps him away for a good while.

RC

Thats is funny. Have you watched him after you spook him? At our place I was able to leave the back of the house then use the waterfall as a blind spot to sneak up on him. When I jumped out from behind the waterfall he puked up on the shore then flew away. The puke had small fish of all kinds flopping on the shore. I wonder if that is how I got the white suckers in our pond?

Cheers Don.

I have wondered if nature has given bird species that prey on fish the natural instinct to "seed" BOW's that are devoid of fish with fingerling fish. The bird tries to fish a BOW but never sees any fish. So the next fly by they stop and puke up some fish to get the BOW started growing fish??????????

Don't know, just speculating. There just seem to be too many unanswered questions of how BOW's have fish that were never stocked and not near enough for fish to swim in from other BOW's.

Nature provides a number of unusual habits of animals that seem unnatural or things we would never have imagined the animal doing. Part of their survival and reproductive instinct.

I saw a Green Heron come close to picking up a fish in one BOW and transferring it to another. Not quite, but close. Had he started his flight a little ways further down the bank the fish would have ended up in a different pond when he dropped it.

I had an owl drop a rabbit on the hood of my truck. Not every behavior offers an evolutionary advantage. Some are just random events.

True. But even random events can effect evolution.

Since fry/fish can swim for miles in even moderate rain events, swimming up considerably high flowing BOW outlets, spillways and waterfalls and have been documented doing so, and since not once has a bird stocking ever been documented, I'll go with fish swimming in. I will also accept the slim odds on birds dropping a male and female fish species in a BOW is possible.......barely.

Eggs being deposited by birds or animals, and remaining viable, an extremely miniscule possibility.

I might buy into the regurgitated minnow stocking, so long as the distance between the waters was very limited. I stop short of calling such a scenario anything but remotely accidental however.

I bet you guys have trouble accepting UFO's and alien abductions too.

Totally believe in UFO's, alien abductions, bigfoot.....more evidence for those than there is for fish eggs sticking to a bird's legs!

I heard they taste like chicken but the drumsticks are sparse on meat. They actually weigh very little. Our border collie accidentally ran into one head on one day and killed it while chasing our car down the lane. I was surprised how light it was. I couldn't even feel its stomach. It was like a hollow tube from its throat to its rear end. They must digest fish as fast as they eat them.

Preach Brother T!

Our dog got one too one day. There really is nothing to these things. The big ones take to long to get off the ground and the dog is alot quicker.

I have personally watched a belted kingfisher move minnows to a smaller body of water to teach her young how to fish.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9dJecJvGto

Listen to the last thing the GBH knows about your pond that you don't.

I've noticed when scared they always give a big squirt of manure as they take off to lighten the load.

"Approximately 48% of Yellowstone’s waters were once fishless"

https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/fish_management_history.htm

Birds could not apparently stock these waters even over tens of thousands of years...

and another

"The absence of fish from eastern lakes is related to the lack of a stream within 50 m of the lake."

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2427.2007.01949.x/abstract

Will, a Bald Eagle showed up at the pond yesterday. last time he or another was there was back in January through March. He was soring over the pond and then set in an old dead oak tree overlooking the pond. I have mixed feelings about it. Glad to see it but I don't like the idea of it feeding on the lmb or the hsb. I will try to get a picture of him gliding over the pond.

Tracy

That reminded me of a story.

A few years ago the game warden came across a guy who had two northern loons he had shot. The guy pleaded to the warden that he and his family were hungry and they were to be eaten. The warden then let the guy go but in passing he asked "out of curiosity what dose Loon taste like?" The guy says alot like bald eagle.



Just kidding funny joke though.