I have noticed a local issue that we should all be aware of in the form of petty, vindictive birds stealing from the elderly. No longer are our peaceful streets of Corvallis safe from harassment, these birds are growing bolder and more disruptive to our community and I urge everyone to take a stand against them. On at least six occasions in the past week I've witnessed birds squawking loudly and offensively around innocent by standers. Many times my own conversations have been interrupted by birdcalls and the distracting presence of birds flying overhead. As if these situations weren't problematic enough however, the situation has worsened. I have heard several complaints from my elderly neighbors who say that the cruelest of these birds have actually stolen trinkets and jewelry from them. One exceptional example of this outrageous avian behavior is from my colleague who claims he was an eye witness to a flock of large, pesky crows entering his yard, and through their combined efforts, making off with one of his beloved garden gnomes. I fear that these birds are only growing more unruly in our lenient town, so I ask that everyone reading this keep watch out for them. At any sign of misbehavior or suspicious activity, particularly from crows, I suggest calling your neighborhood watch or local authorities. And if anyone has seen a jolly garden gnome, please have it returned to its bereft owner. Together I believe Corvallis can overcome this threat, but remember, constant vigilance!

Love the sign in! so long no one has time to read it leave alone type it.
Well you are having a lend of us are you not?
Poor little gnome! now a love child of the strongest birds in the world.
Indian Minors haunted me, flocks of over 60.
Now gone, not at my hand.
Not for the want of trying.
Yobbo up the road did it, then put the bait out on the nature strip!
Poor bloke and family are unaware of how to live in a community.

Living with the Asian minor birds is easy, its the self-righteous galahs with there constant pointless chattering thats most annoying.

http://tinyurl.com/a2dhoqh

planet3..:)

To our new poster.
The unhappy lass/bloke above is a green.
And holds me personally responsible for the fact Australia is waking to them.
Most birds I ever got to know,are worth the effort, yes all the control and stuff still worth the effort.
I draw the line and tree hugging Morris dancing Greens.

The corvids of Corvallis eh?

Corvallis, meaning valley of the crows, is situated on tablelands of northern of New South Wales, is it not?

The crows owned the place…. until those great lumbering humans really stuffed it up!

Well, those invading impetuous idiots have got problems, because there is not one, not two, but three species of very smart corvids in that area, which will band together and make sure that the humans get their comeuppance.

Those smart Torresian crows are going to team up with their slightly larger and smarter Australian raven cousins, and they are going to call on their even larger and really smart rare relict raven relatives, to help them formulate a master plan to eliminate the human scourge once and for all!

Stay tuned!

cant wait till the 4 th type of crow
leaves the tower of londinium..*
not enough eating crow.

[i suspect the fairies took the plaster gnome..
=[shoulda filled it with sand and cement..cause plaster rots...

My horses don't like lorikeets. I planted a couple of apple trees 20 years ago. They were nice apples, but I got a bit chary about all the sprays for fruit fly, so stopped. For a few years I would get half a bucket full of fruit fly stung apples for the horses, every day for about 6 weeks.

Enter the lorikeets. They eat the quarter grown apples as they hang on the trees, leaving just a shriveling core hanging there. There are dozens of them, & a few king parrots to help them. Poor horses.

I had no idea there were different types of crows Luddy. As a boy from sheep country, where the damn things would peck the eyes out of new born lambs, all I ever see, when a crow is about is a target.

Don't ever believe that rubbish about crows being smart either. Cunning yes, smart no. They appear at my lemon tree occasionally, where they will peck a lemon, decide it's sour, then try the next, until all are ruined, if not disturbed. Never go near the Mandarins though. Pity that yellow belly black snake got the small dog, she used to chase crows & kangaroos. Never brought one back mind, but did chase them.

Then there's the maggies & butcher birds, all of whom demand to be fed cat food, when all the domestic animals are fed. At present there are 3 fledgling maggies & five I think butcher bird fledglings.

I think feeding them helps protect the blue wrens nesting in the asparagus fern. I'd chop that horrible stuff out, if the wrens didn't need it's protection.

I would hazard a guess at their next move – stealing garden gnomes and heavy objects of all sorts and taking them up to considerable heights and dropping them on the rooves of houses and cars and the heads of dogs, cats, cattle and children.

I’ve also heard that the currawongs in the area are very displeased with humans. So the crows may well call on them to assist. And the magpies… and butcherbirds…

The eye-pecking of lambs and calves and the destruction of fruit while on the tree and all sorts of other tactics will escalate.

I reckon they’ll strike up a partnership with their traditional enemies, other original Corvallians such as the members of the lorikeet, parrot and cockatoo family!

It’s just a matter of time before those moronic humans are forced out.

Excellent, Ludwig,

....but I reckon Daphne Du Maurier beat you to it.

http://www.enotes.com/birds

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me. There was a padlock and a chain upon the gate. I called in my dream to the lodge-keeper, and had no answer, and peering closer through the rusted spokes to the gate I saw that the lodge was uninhabited except for the boids. He kept boids. Dirty... disgusting... filthy... lice-ridden boids. You used to be able to sit out on the stoop of the lodge like a person. Not anymore! No, sir! Boids!... You get my drift?

Last night I dreamt I went to Craggy Island again....(feckin' bords...)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx4nN0HkByg

I saw something the other day that will stay with me for a long time.

I was passing a group of flats --one of those Stalinist era developments with a grid a four, two storey unit blocks, and a generic landscaped garden , inhabited by never to be glimpsed residents -- when I head this unholy screeching. I looked across to see an injured rainbow lorikeet cowering under one of the hedges. A large crow had the tip of its wing in its beak and was endeavoring to drag it from its flimsy cover. And looking on from nearby trees waiting for the life and death tug-of-war to play-out, was a posse of six other large black birds (a mix of crows and currawongs)

What made the tableau vivant poignant was the impassive demeanor of the big birds. And, that it was being acted out straight up against the wall of a block of units in the heart of our biggest city –but seemingly no one was aware of it.

P.S. If you remove the asparagus, I urge you to replace it with a thicket of some sort.

P.S. If you remove the asparagus, I urge you to replace it with a thicket of some sort.

Should read:
P.S. HASBEEN, if you remove the asparagus, I urge you to replace it with a thicket of some sort

Luddy, I am starting to doubt your story of living in Townsville. That or you are a very very heavy sleeper.

You say birds will START taking heavy objects up high to drop on roofs & people.

When I lived in Townsville, 50 years ago, at this time of year we would get half a dozen such droppings of large heavy green mangoes, on the roof each night.

I learnt to sleep through it, but my mother never did. Moving back south was a return to civilisation for her.

I believe that " half a dozen such droppings of large heavy green mangoes" was Du Maurier's alternative plot for the demise of Rebecca...but she decided to stick with her original synopsis.

(How does that sound, WmTrevor?)

the best you got is mangoes?
lets dig deeper

Aeschylus was killed in 456 BC when an eagle (or more likely a Lammergeier), mistaking the playwright's bald crown..for a stone, dropped a tortoise on his head (though some accounts differ, claiming it was a stone dropped by an eagle or vulture that likely mistook his bald head for the egg of a flightless bird).

The inscription on his gravestone
was written by himself before his death..it talks only of his war mongering..;oh well so much for signs
http://www.crystalinks.com/aeschylus.html

i recall hithcocks 'the birds'..that today is renowned for its poor special affects..but heck lets spin it anyhow

"Heavy green mangoes" sounds more like an Australian rewrite of a Kathy Bates/Jessica Tandy film, Poirot.

But I've been reclining à la Ramon Novarro in my slum coloured poking jacket as the muse-de-jour (day nurse) tickles my fancy...

But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and duct;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of luck -
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of pluck
Meant in croaking "'aarrk, 'aarrk, 'aarrk!"

"...plum coloured smoking jacket..." I blame Titivillus or Spooner.

WmTrevor,

Surely that should be "Fried Green Famingoes", (or "pink" when they're fully ripened)

I'd blame Spooner - but a slum coloured poking jacket is even better than a town bound drain, IMO....(my cousin once regailed me with a very funny spoonerism after a trip to Cottesloe - she saw "Alan Dond walking his bog" : )

Grrrr...and double grrrrr - that should be "flamingoes".

Thanks Poirot. I remember watching Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’, based on Du Maurier’s book many years ago.

I thought about that when I read the opening post. What happened in that movie at Bodega Bay in California is just starting to happen at Corvallis. Only difference is that that was fiction while this is real!!

I passed through Corvallis earlier this year. It struck me that the great number of crows and ravens were particularly noisy and rambunctious. It felt very spooky when the crows started to gather around me in large numbers while I boiled the billy, with no other people anywhere around. Then suddenly there was this considerably larger one with a much deeper voice, a relict raven, on the picnic table right in front of me, looking as though he had some serious eye-pecking on his mind!

I let them all know that I had a pot of boiling water at my fingertips, ready to throw in their faces. I reckon that if I hadn’t done that, I could have been in real trouble!

I did say 'Australian rewrite' so shouldn't it be "Fried Green Dingos"? But I'm not from the deep north and despite twitching I'm not that into birds. Maybe someone who has encountered scrub-birds and thrush; or eaten meat on a skua or tasted a cockatoo could suggest an alternative?

Re 'grrrr'... as I said, Titivillus.

Sure it wasn't the Tippi Hedren-style wig Lud?

Mangoes banging on a tin roof. Yes Haz, that’s a classic sound in the older suburbs in our tropical towns.

But it ain’t boids that do it. Tis them flocculating floiying floxxes!

I reckon that’s where the crows the idea!

On your currawongs Luddy, I'm not a fan of them either.

I was chatting to a big rough tough mechanic in the workshop of a Whitsunday's resort island one day. He had just welded up a Y of water pipe. Asked what it was for he said it was a catapult to get the currawongs.

Asked why he pointed to the roof trusses, from which hung a number of those beautiful teardrop nests of the little sun birds. These he'd surrounded in large chicken wire enclosures to protect them from the currawongs he was going to get.

A greeny type roustabout piped up that he couldn't do that, the currawongs were just doing what came naturally.

Our mechanic first agreed, but than said, "yer, your right, but you see, I've got news for those currawongs". "I'm part of nature too, & I don't like the bast4rds".

I liked that island. The owner had cup hooks screwed into the ceiling of his & 2 other offices. There were 3 active sun bird nests in his office alone. The louvers were always left open to give the birds access, & they were safe in there.

Those sun birds sure knew which part of nature was likely to be friendly to them.

Yep those damn bats. How times have changed Luddy. We were there just after the war. There was a huge colony that moved into the mangroves between the city & Hermit Park, beside the causeway. The whole town stank.

Rather than having some fool demanding they be admired, this was about 1947, when people had more sense.

They called in the army, who brought a couple of those WW11 flame throwers. A couple of squirts sent the bats on their way, & they burnt out the roosting site. Locals said it eliminated the mossies & sand flies in the area for months too.

<< Grrrr...and double grrrrr >>

Same here, Poirot.

How is it possible to carefully read over a post at least twenty times, do a spell and grammar check, and still get glaring errors.... which then stand out like dogs balls as soon as you reread your comment after posting it!

The old MWS strikes again (missing word syndrome, which really drives me batty on OLO!!)

< I reckon that’s where the crows GOT the idea! >

Triple Grrrrrrrr!!

.

Yes Haz, those currawongs can be problematic. Likewise with noisy miners. In fact, there are a quite few native species which are arguably worse than any of the feathered ferals like Indian mynas, sparrows, starlings or feral pigeons.

But we can really blame those damn pesky feral humans for mucking around with their environment and causing them to go somewhat awry!

"But we can really blame those damn pesky feral humans for mucking around with their environment"

Oh really, and why is that? Humans are the biggest feral pests, just ask Belly:)....The greens have warned multiple times about the environmental impacts we cause and just to see the devastation is truly heart breaking.

Belly said, he knows what the Greens are up to..lol...mate! Its all right:)...your pills are on top of the fridge.

Planet3

WmTrevor,

Perhaps we could do a Latin-American rewrite as well, wherein the native avian population set their sights on the new world invaders - as in "Freeze Dried Gringos"...(apparently,according to wiki, the Andean civilisations preserved potatoes using a freeze drying process...so it's totally believable : )

Just a suggestion, or course.

(I've obviously got too much time on my hands today : )

P3 may you come in to close contact with a wooly bull.
Newcastle a few years ago had an invasion of flying chooks, the frozen kind.
Smashed in to car ports, and roofs , no one ever found our who did it.
Got to go, shooting crows, dedicating them to P3.

Playing god again here, but this is an unusual one. It is not often that a kookaburra needs help.

My home is L shaped, with the pool, now converted to a fish pond since the kids left, in the root of the L. My computer is beside the family room glass door, leading out to the pool.

I could hear something like the cooing of a dove as I sat here, & ignored it, but finally went to have a look at what it was. This was very lucky for a young Kookaburra.

He was at one end of the pool, against the edge, wings spread, with only his head above water, & obviously exhausted. I scooped him out, & set him on the grass, but all he could do was lie there, he had no control of his legs.

An hour later he is on his feet, but not able to walk properly of fly. I have had to move him a couple of times, as the ants were swarming onto him. At least now he's strong enough to threaten me, when I move him, a good sign.

Wish him luck.

A lot of young birds don't make it when it is dry like this, when they try to bath in something they can't get out of. Last year it was a young eagle in one of the bath tubs used as water troughs. He was still fit enough to be very threatening, & grabbed a fence paling I offered him very hard. It was still a couple of hours before he could fly.

Silly damn birds.

My pesky kookaburra finally got dry, & strong enough to take off. Fortunately I was watching him out the kitchen window, while making a coffee.

Yes he was strong enough to fly, but not far enough to make it the length of the pool, & back in he went. This time however he was strong enough to give me a good talking to, as I fished him out with the scoop. It was something like a cross between a screech & a laugh, & like nothing I have ever heard before.

He is still on his feet, & much stronger, so we'll see how he goes this time.

Hasbeen,

An offcut strip of reo weldmesh can automate the pesky bird pool or tub rescue system. Almost all birds when they first fall or get trapped in pools are strong enough swimmers to reach such a 'ladder', provided it reaches down to just below the water surface.

The 8-10mm diameter of the reo is something all birds' feet can grip, provided it is anchored well.

Thanks Forrest. The pool still has the old pool ladder in it, but this one hadn't found it.

All is well, he's in a tree in the windbreak around the house. He couldn't get high enough to make it to his family nest, but made it up about 5 meters.

I have a good knowledge of this bloke, I think I saw him conceived.

Once again looking out my glass door past the pool, I heard a commotion, & looked out quickly enough to catch his parents falling out of their tree, literally.

It appears that like maggies, kookaburras remain locked together for some time after mating. This pair must be a bit clumsy, as I saw them, locked together, bouncing from branch to branch, about 10 meters down, to the ground. Luckily they landed in a thick vine, growing on the fence.

It was at least 20 minutes before I saw them sitting sulkily apart in their tree.

Nice little kookaburra story, Hasbeen....hope he does okay : )