The big return

So once I trapped these last two sparrows the whole colony disappeared. It seems as though my trapping pressure was an act of exclusion as these birds caught on. I left the trap out there for 3 days after the last success and all I saw out there was my loyal village idiot doves. I removed the trap today to see what happened and literally within 5 minutes the entire colony of approximately 30 birds magically reappeared.

If you find yourself short of targets I recommend removing the traps and letting the sparrows get comfortable again. I would imagine that when you begin to trap again you may want to use a different trap type to avoid reminding them of their demise. I have no idea what the memory capabilities of these boogers is but I would stay on the safe side until we find out for sure.

I will probably try to reintroduce the same trap tomarrow and then repeat the steps a couple of times to get a good idea of how well they keep track of these things and for how long. The results of this test should turn out to be quite beneficial for our trapping efforts.

Wish me luck!

Until I get some baiting feathers for the trap during the nesting season, I'm going to Big R and get a small amount of white millet. The squirrels don't touch it.

Looks like they still don't like that trap, might have to introduce some other types and see if that takes their mind off of it.

Squirrels made a liar out of me. When I brought the repeater in the other day, there was a squirrel licking up all of the white millet. Come on feathers! hahahahahahahahahahha

HaHa oops!

I would never empty the trap completely, leave a male and a female in there, they will attract more. I feed mine with scratch and they have water. My traps have not been empty in years.
Barbara

That's true for repeaters, but I don't use repeaters at home so decoys don't work. You're right though, repeaters work best when they have a decoy in there.