I've had hoards of Band-tailed Pigeons at a platform feeder for years. When
the platform feeder is empty, they sometimes go to a hopper feeder but my
hopper contains only a wild bird seed mix, with few sunflower seeds. In
past years I've been able to count more than two dozen at one time. Numbers
seem to be down this year; but, that may be because I ration the black oil
sunflower seeds put into the feeder. When I realized I was going through a
40 pound bag in a month, or less, and the price of the seeds had more than
doubled, I decided to cut back. As you say, the pigeons eat virtually all
the black oil sunflower seeds. Chickadees make a lot of trips and they are
fun to watch; but, at one seed per trip, the volume they consume is
miniscule. I look for sales on 40 pound bags of black oil sunflower seeds
at Fred Meyer.



I have been fortunate enough to see a Coopers's Hawk make a kill on a
Band-tailed pigeon once. The pigeon sort of exploded into a cloud of
feathers that drifted to the ground over an area about 8'-10' in diameter.
Very impressive! Like you, I usually only see an area of the lawn with a
lot of feathers. Last year I had a juvenile Cooper's Hawk that would perch
on a fence about 6' away from the feeder for a while. Naturally, when it
was there and in such a conspicuous position, no birds were to be seen in
the yard. I assume it learned a better hunting technique.



Burney Huff

Lakewood, WA

Burney.Huff at mindspring.com



Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2011 22:15:22 -0700

From: "Doug Schurman" <subscribe at bodyresults.com>

Subject: [Tweeters] Band-tailed Pigeons - boy can they go through the

seed!

To: "'Roger Moyer'" <rogermoyer1 at hotmail.com>, "'tweeters'"

<tweeters at u.washington.edu>

Message-ID: <004901cc2d76$bb0b69e0$31223da0$ at com>

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"



Hello All,







For the last several months I have been having many band-tailed pigeons at
my hopper feeder. Up to 16 in the yard at one time.







Currently they seem to be consuming about 5lbs of black sunflower seeds each
week. I'd say they are consuming more than 90 percent of all the feed I'm
putting out among my dozen or so seed feeders. Anyone else having a lot of
Band-tailed chowing down on their seed?







Another note:



In the last 3 months or so I have found 5 piles of band-tail feathers
(usually about 8 of the big ones). I assuming something like a Cooper's Hawk
is getting a meal too. I've never seen this occur but wish I could. Does
that sound right that a hawk is probably dinning occasionally here too?







Thanks



Doug Schurman



Seattle - Olympic Hills