If you are newish to my blog you might want to check out some backstory to this post here, here and here.
Crows, gulls, and wood pigeons. I'm not in the market for eating any of them - or being eaten by any of them. F is still feeding the crows. Five of them take advantage of her buffet now - 2 parents and 3 young ones. She got really annoyed with the wood pigeons for eating the cardboard cat biscuits, and switched to feeding the crows on cheap tinned catfood. I'm not convinced that it contains any more meat (or any less of whatever attracts pigeons), but it is certainly more attractive to gulls.
'See where this is going?
Look-out gulls circle around the neighbourhood, especially about the time of day F gets up and feeds all the avian freeloaders in our backyard. They can see individual lumps of catfood from hundreds of feet up in the air and instantly the yard is full of squawking, fighting gulls of at least three kinds. The noise attracts yet more gulls.
So F struck on a plan. My humans lifted our picnic table (the one I use for an air-raid shelter) off the patio and onto the lawn. Now she puts the crow food under the table. The gulls can't see it and cruise on by.
The crows took no time at all to understand the advantages of taking their meals under the table (for table now read 'general purpose air raid shelter') and had no fear of the arrangement - except that I'm onto them now.
They are not as scarey as I imagined them to be. They make a lot of noise, but they are 'all mouth and no trousers' (human saying I quite like). If I sit on the table after F has put out the food, they stay on the fence and shout at me, but that's all they do. They don't come any closer. Ha ha.... foiled them. One bold young one does bounce down onto the lawn to shout, but it still keeps well out of range.
F drags me indoors if she catches me doing it. Where's her sense of fun?
Crows, gulls, and wood pigeons. I'm not in the market for eating any of them - or being eaten by any of them. F is still feeding the crows. Five of them take advantage of her buffet now - 2 parents and 3 young ones. She got really annoyed with the wood pigeons for eating the cardboard cat biscuits, and switched to feeding the crows on cheap tinned catfood. I'm not convinced that it contains any more meat (or any less of whatever attracts pigeons), but it is certainly more attractive to gulls.
'See where this is going?
Look-out gulls circle around the neighbourhood, especially about the time of day F gets up and feeds all the avian freeloaders in our backyard. They can see individual lumps of catfood from hundreds of feet up in the air and instantly the yard is full of squawking, fighting gulls of at least three kinds. The noise attracts yet more gulls.
So F struck on a plan. My humans lifted our picnic table (the one I use for an air-raid shelter) off the patio and onto the lawn. Now she puts the crow food under the table. The gulls can't see it and cruise on by.
The crows took no time at all to understand the advantages of taking their meals under the table (for table now read 'general purpose air raid shelter') and had no fear of the arrangement - except that I'm onto them now.
They are not as scarey as I imagined them to be. They make a lot of noise, but they are 'all mouth and no trousers' (human saying I quite like). If I sit on the table after F has put out the food, they stay on the fence and shout at me, but that's all they do. They don't come any closer. Ha ha.... foiled them. One bold young one does bounce down onto the lawn to shout, but it still keeps well out of range.
F drags me indoors if she catches me doing it. Where's her sense of fun?
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