Alan Richards' posting prompts me to mention a good pair of essays in
Birding 26 (4), August 1994. Brad Schram argues for "cowbird recipes," and
finishes "We need to act, and the sooner the more successful. The
aforementioned cowbird control successes tell us it is not too late to be
effective. How much longer that can be said, no one knows." Jamie Smith
counters that cowbirds have been made convenient scapegoats and argues for
more money spent in acquiring knowledge rather than killing cowbirds. He
concludes "There is much to be done, but I believe that continent-wide
cowbird control is far from the top of our priority list." I come down on
Jamie's side (believe me, he's not a "cowbird lover"), after reading both
of the arguments; one of the most convincing is that 15 years of cowbird
control (surely at the expense of millions of dollars--yes, I know, it
provides jobs for wildlife biologists essentially forever) has done nothing
to increase Kirtland's warbler numbers, which happened only after a big
fire provided adequate young jack pine habitat.

Parenthetically, my method of cowbird control actually *saves* money--I
just stop putting millet seed in my feeders when the cowbirds arrive in my
yard, and they go away!

SAVE HABITATS INCREASE KNOWLEDGE SAVE HABITATS INCREASE KNOWLEDGE SAVE HABITATS
(is my subliminal message clear?).

Dennis Paulson