XPost: rec.birds   
   From: gl4317@yahoo.com   
      
   In article <944lfaFon2U1@mid.individual.net>,   
    "Laurence F. Sheldon, Jr."  wrote:   
      
   > There used to be places where a city or county truck would drive up and   
   > a guy would get out, stick a double-barreled shotgun into a tree full of   
   > crows, unload it and get back in his truck and drive off leaving dead   
   > crows on the ground for the property owner to clean up.  I have never   
   > witnessed this sort of things but in pre-Internet days the stories got   
   > around.   
   >   
   > Anyway, it occurred to me that maybe they were using poison instead of a   
   > shot gun.   
   >   
   > I've never figured out why, there are people who hate crows.   
      
      
   I wish they would start doing that with starlings.  We have a horrible   
   overpopulation of them here, and as a non-native species are making   
   trouble for a number of birds.  Purple martin, western blue bird, and   
   many others are in trouble with available nesting cavities having been   
   taken over by starlings.   
      
   The starlings are also wrecking havoc on some of the fruit crops.  Last   
   fall I saw a column of them about 100 feet wide, 100 feet tall, and 1/2   
   a mile long flying between two of the Willamette Valley vinyards.   
      
   At least crows are native.   
      
   If I remember right, crows are particularly susceptible to west nile   
   virus.  It might be worth having the local disease control office take a   
   look at the crow corpses to see if they are dying from something that   
   can be spread to humans.   
      
   If it were me I'd probably tell the lady that there were a lot of dead   
   crows in the park, and she shouldn't let her dogs touch them as they   
   might get whatever killed the crows.  That this is extremely unlikely to   
   happen would probably be lost on her.   
      
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    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)