Navigational failure

[strange_complex]

I feel very, very sorry indeed for the bird who left the following all-too-eloquent imprint on one of my upstairs windows:



I did not actually find its poor, crumpled body on the ground below - but given how many foxes live in my area, that's no guarantee it wasn't there, for a short while at least. :-(

Comments

[rich-r.livejournal.com]

We keep getting a thump followed by a pigeon shaped imprint like that on our upstairs windows. Haven't yet found a dead bird nearby though, so I presume they recover and fly off.

I have watched a sparrowhawk chase a pigeon towards the house, then swoop away at the last second. So I presume they've developed that as a hunting strategy. I seem them quite frequently sitting around waiting for a baby great tit or blackbird to be exposed away from the nest.

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Naughty sparrowhawks! I bet it works, though. Even if the pigeon is only stunned for a second, it's plenty of time to grab them.

[rich-r.livejournal.com]

I seem them... - What on earth was I typing? The words 'I've seen them' might make more sense!

The funny thing is the disparity in size between the birds of prey and the pigeons which are big, healthy and plump (I suppose they're well fed on seeds and things from the farms, rather than the diseased, maimed ones you often see in towns). I imagine the sparrowhawk wouldn't be able to carry a dead pigeon very far at all.

[themonkeypolice.livejournal.com]

Flip me.... looks like you've got a ghost living in your window there!
I discovered a dead bird under my window yesterday. Must move it today. Not looking forward to that.

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Yuk! That is one good thing about the foxes here. There was a dead rat on my lawn at one point - but not for long.

[spodlife]

My local foxes don't touch the headless mice dumped by the local cats. Nor do the cats :-(

[serennos.livejournal.com]

Despite birds irritating me on a daily basis at the moment, I do feel rather sorry for it. If it did die, I imagine that it would have been quick and provided some other animal with a meal (or provided a cat with a nice present to arrange in its lounge for some unsuspecting owner...)

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

There are a lot of cats round here who would easily be up to those sort of tricks, too!

[xipuloxx.livejournal.com]

Birds do often recover from hitting windows, so I wouldn't necessarily assume it was gobbled up. Once when my parents and I were in our living room, there was an almighty BANG on the window that made us all jump. We couldn't see anything from inside, so we went outside, and found a stunned but still-alive bird (a starling, I think) under the window. After a while it managed to fly off again, apparently none the worse for its experience.

Mind you, if our cat had been about it might have been a different story...

[davesangel.livejournal.com]

Oh no, poor thing! However, I am reminded of the scene from Harry Potter in which the owl cast as Errol flew into the kitchen window of the Weasley household and recovered - so there is some hope! :)

We have a gorgeous cat that's been hanging around our garden recently and have realised that it has been abandoned and lives in our garden completely because it knows that I'll give it loads of attention. Unfortunately, to feed itself, it has been attacking birds left right and centre. I'm fully aware that this is what cats do, but repeatedly finding bits of birds all over the garden is getting a tad upsetting...

[xipuloxx.livejournal.com]

If you give it plenty of food it'll probably attack birds a lot less. It won't stop altogether of course, as it's a cat, but actually they're generally quite bad at catching birds, and without the incentive of hunger it probably won't try that hard to actually catch them, and will hunt more out of instinct, which tends to be less fatal.

[davesangel.livejournal.com]

My parents don't want us to feed it because they don't want the hassle of another cat after Fudge. Also from my experience of cats, if you start feeding one that's been so used to killing birds for food, it will continue to kill birds for 'fun' because it's something it's used to doing...I've seen lots of cats do that so we had to fit them with a bell to make sure that the birds would hear them...