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Hi all, woke this morning to a sight of carnage, dead young blackbirds over the garden, some half eaten others just lying there dead. The furthest apart was twenty metres? we have no cats here, least wise not that i know of. There are no barns/grange's close by that would house martens, any ideas. I presume the pine marten to be the culprit but no evidence of there being any in the vicinity, confused, hugh.

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Not a great start to the day, mais, ça arrive. Could be any number of creatures if you found them like that, Magpies a possibility, Stone martens another, they have a fair sized territory in the countryside, but as you say they frequently live in buildings at this time of year but that could be a good distance from you. Pine martens have an even larger territory with several residences scattered around and can travel 25 kilometres or more in a night, sort of here today and gone tomorrow. Feral cats, of course, take quite a lot of birds but I would have thought that they would stop and eat the first one killed and not go on a spree.

Back to the same old problem, unless you actually see the event, you're left guessing a bit. Were the birds large enough to fly or still in the nest?

Chris.

 

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Hi Chris, the hedge is a Lleylandi and fairly thick so i think i can rule out magpie and a cat would also have difficulty in getting into it, only 5 ft high but more dense than Del Boy on a night on the Vino, mange tu rodders. I am in favour of the pine marten, can you buy traps for them legally, no wish to kill them but being caught might scare the bejeebers out of them ???? The birds were feathered but not ready for flight, maybe about a week away, Hugh.

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Hugh, you can buy Ragondin cage traps at some of the more "farming" type markets and you can catch all sorts in them depending on what you bait them with, doubtful about how legal this is though if you get my drift. The important thing is to make sure that you visit the trap regularly to prevent any harm to anything that is in it, even cats sometimes!!!  If it is a pine marten it may well have moved on, a stone marten is more likely to be resident close by. Genette is another possible? 

A cage trap can be quite a useful thing in the right hands.

Phil, the problem with Mairie system is that they will kill anything that is "on the list" which may not be what everyone wants.

Chris

 

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