>From Russell Rogers, rrogers at halcyon.com

I agree with Dennis on the cowbird problem. Killing cowbirds is like
trying to stop a leaky dam from behind with your little finger (I have
participated in exterminating cowbirds and I must admit it is a satisfying
activity).

The fact of the matter is that cowbirds dont like forest and will not go
very far in to them to lay their eggs. You dont start to see diminishing
effects of cowbirds until you get one fourth of a mile in to the woods,
and you dont start to see no effects at about a mile into the forest.
Herein lies the problem. To have one square mile of cowbird free forest
it needs to be surrounded by eight square miles of buffer forest. In the
east that much unbroken forest is very rare. Fragmentation is our biggest
enemy. Restore the forest and the cowbirds will go back to the midwest.


On Thu, 25 Aug 1994, Dennis Paulson wrote:

> 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
>
>
>