Oh how I hate starlings! This means WAR!!!!!

[avalancher]

I live on a farm....but the biggest problem I had was where I work. Our office had some Aristocrat Pear trees that were planted in the grass island around the parking lot. For the first 8-10 years all was well and the trees are really pretty in the spring when they are blooming, and in the fall they have small berries on them about the size of a cherry. As the trees got bigger they started producing large amounts of fruit, and in November and December the Starlings would show up by the thousands to eat the berries. Our parking lot became almost unuseable for about 2 months - we finally had to cut the trees down and we planted Maple trees as we could not ask our employees to put up with this kind of abuse. The birds may not show up one day....but they would come and go and leave behind a horrible mess every couple of days until the berries were gone. The acidic droppings would etch the clear coat and stain the paint on the cars. The attached pictures show what would happen after a single visit by the Starlings.

Yeah,I would be pretty pissed to if I had to park in that lot!

We dont have a problem with starlings here,but the friggin mockingbirds have become a pest like I have never seen.
Two of them pesks set up camp in my shop in my nuts and bolts bins.I had no idea until yesterday morning when I flipped on the lights and was literally attacked by the buggers. After they circled around in the shop for a bit it was clear that they were not going to make any attempt to go back out the way they came in and give me a chance to seal off that hole.I downed them with a BB gun and this morning now I have three more in the shop!AAAGGGGHHH!

 

[Turkeyslayer]

here's a pic of my Beeman R-1 .22 with custom Marcari Walnut stock with a couple of dead Starlings.

Nice Pic, that is a beauty of a pellet gun. I have an old Benjamin, and a couple of cheapy crossman guns. I would like one of those 1600fps Gamos, http://www.gamo-airguns.com/ but its not in the budget right now

Nice to see we have a few airgun addicts here...

Here a couple of mine.

A chinese Beeman SS1000 in .22
Benjamin Discovery HPA in .22

Nice rifles, they are cheap and fun to shoot!

I live on a farm....but the biggest problem I had was where I work. Our office had some Aristocrat Pear trees that were planted in the grass island around the parking lot. For the first 8-10 years all was well and the trees are really pretty in the spring when they are blooming, and in the fall they have small berries on them about the size of a cherry. As the trees got bigger they started producing large amounts of fruit, and in November and December the Starlings would show up by the thousands to eat the berries. Our parking lot became almost unuseable for about 2 months - we finally had to cut the trees down and we planted Maple trees as we could not ask our employees to put up with this kind of abuse. The birds may not show up one day....but they would come and go and leave behind a horrible mess every couple of days until the berries were gone. The acidic droppings would etch the clear coat and stain the paint on the cars. The attached pictures show what would happen after a single visit by the Starlings.

That is nasty, it would definatly make me ballistic if they where ####ting up my employees cars like that!

Yeah,I would be pretty pissed to if I had to park in that lot!

We dont have a problem with starlings here,but the friggin mockingbirds have become a pest like I have never seen.
Two of them pesks set up camp in my shop in my nuts and bolts bins.I had no idea until yesterday morning when I flipped on the lights and was literally attacked by the buggers. After they circled around in the shop for a bit it was clear that they were not going to make any attempt to go back out the way they came in and give me a chance to seal off that hole.I downed them with a BB gun and this morning now I have three more in the shop!AAAGGGGHHH!

You need your woodpile night watchman (in your sig)to start whacking some of those rotten birds.

 

[KD57]

I keep a RWS 350 pellet gun handy all the time, pick them off when I can, but they wise up pretty quick. If I can catch them in a group, the 12 ga. comes out. I have to stay after them all year, but spring is the worst.
I have killed 11 this week w/ the pellet gun.
On fun thing I do, is when I see them go into the barn, I sneak up to the barn, kick the wall, and when they come shooting out of there, I hammer them w/ the shotgun.

 

[MJR]

On my farm it is Avitrol as well.

 

[Turkeyslayer]

Just got back from the gun shop. Went there with the intention of getting some of those pba pellets http://www.gamousa.com/product.aspx?productID=79. But instead came home with some Remington CBEE22, .22 ammo. They have the same or less muzzle velocity as most pellets (740 fps). The only downfall is they wont cycle through my Ruger 10/22, but lucky for me I have a few other .22's to choose from.

 

[boda65]

They know when you are armed

It seems whenever I see a starling, I go in to get Mossie (what my wife named the Mossberg 590 military model) and I go back outside and they are gone. I'm thinking of getting a Taurus Judge and wearing it whenever I am outside. That way I would always at least have a .410 on me.

 

[Wood Doctor]

The European starling is the curse of the bird world. Constantly moving, they are even hard to hit with a gun. They crap all over the place and intimidate every good bird that there is.

Each year the bank downtown spends $10,000 trying to clean up starling dung that covers the tall building and the sidewalks below. Nothing stops them. It's a shame we can't train a raptor to feed on them.

 

[Hddnis]

Geese are what I'd gun down if I could. Imagine those cars a few posts up, but with goose poop instead. They make messes the size of dogs. A street sweeper shotgun loaded with buck would be really nice, but not legal around here so we don't do it.



Mr. HE

 

[woodbooga]

Even declared war on squirrels when they found a way into my house.

Not much of a problem for me. Word's out in the acorn patch that the denizens of Chez Woodbooga have a zero tolerence policy towards the pests.

Last one that came in committed pre-emptive hari kari in the dumper. Wife found the critter all rigor mortis and face down in the bowl just before setting down to pee.

She didn't have her glasses on and thought I'd laid a terd in there without flushing. When I went in to inspect I hollered out to her to get back in there. Told her my terds don't have ears or a fuzzy tail.

Don't know if I'd be able to make the same claim if I were StihlSawing. Downstairs in off topic, the word out is that he poops gerbils.

 

[danrclem]

Aren't you glad that cows don't fly.

 

[Torin]

Aren't you glad that cows don't fly.

That's funny!

a .22 will go a long way if shot upward. When I was very young, I got lucky. The guy that came running through the woods screaming got very lucky, he was on his roof working, quite a distance away.

 

[Haywire Haywood]

If you had told me that starlings would break into a car and install gawd awful tiger stripe seat covers, I would have called you a liar... but you have the pics. What's all those spots on the glass and paint? Car wash forget to fill the Jet Dry reservoir?

Ian

 

[Metals406]

The only thing cool about Starlings is their different mimicking calls. . . The Starlings here do a pretty spot on coyote.

They're dirty, nest stealing, poop everywhere bastards though, and I'm in year 5 of my war.

After the first year, they got wise to me. The slightest noise of a door opening on the house, and they bolted. They are also know for their evasive maneuvers in the air.

After year 2, I got wise and started to use a 20ga. shotgun. Still really hard to shoot them on the wing. The ammo shops were loving it though.

Last spring we only had a couple battles, and this year I may not see any? They're a generational returning bird, and return to their nesting areas every year. I've been seriously inhibiting their ability to nest here, so they go elsewhere.

What's funny is my neighbors. . . Complete and utter greenies. I think the Starlings picked their little red barn to nest in. LOL

Being "earth friendly",my neighbors will probably just put up with the messy, dirty birds.

Good riddance I say!

 

[woodbooga]

Being "earth friendly",my neighbors will probably just put up with the messy, dirty birds.

I've got no problem with folks that are well-informed environmentalists. But there's too many people who don't make the distinction between native and invasive kinds of wildlife. Starlings are the bird equivalent of oriental bittersweet. Serve no good purpose and it's near next to impossible to say good riddance to bad rubbish.

When I worked in Capital City years ago, I used to have to walk by a nesting site. The piles of feces were just insane. The uric acid in the feces can corrode stone, masonry, and even metal.

 

[jags]

For short range - this stuff is darn effective and no worries about the range of bullets.

 

[funcuttin]

Had the USDA come and bait at our farm in early Feb, between us and a neighbors they figure they got about 4000 of them. We can see the sun again! The poison is fully digested before the birds die so it will not hurt the animals that eat them. The cats had a field day.

 

[Torin]

For short range - this stuff is darn effective and no worries about the range of bullets.

I tried that stuff on rats at about 5 yards. I'm not that bad a shot and the thing turned and went back down the hole. I went back to .22 longs.

 

[Metals406]

I've got no problem with folks that are well-informed environmentalists. But there's too many people who don't make the distinction between native and invasive kinds of wildlife. Starlings are the bird equivalent of oriental bittersweet. Serve no good purpose and it's near next to impossible to say good riddance to bad rubbish.

When I worked in Capital City years ago, I used to have to walk by a nesting site. The piles of feces were just insane. The uric acid in the feces can corrode stone, masonry, and even metal.

Don't get me wrong, they're great neighbors. . . Keep to themselves and are super nice. They're just greenies is all.

 

[indiansprings]

It's fun to take those .22 shotshells out into the barn at night with a bright flashlight, "freezes" them on the nest. Easy killing, get's rid of the sparrow's as well.

 

[oneoldbanjo]

If you had told me that starlings would break into a car and install gawd awful tiger stripe seat covers, I would have called you a liar... but you have the pics. What's all those spots on the glass and paint? Car wash forget to fill the Jet Dry reservoir?Ian

That a funny interpretation of the photos.....

Yea we do have a variety of employees and clientele.....from old Camaro's with tiger stripe seat covers to BMW's with leather. I do work with the Planning and Zoning Department for a small City.....and I kept those pictures so I could show the developers what happens if they want to plant Aristocrat Pear trees around their parking lot.