Thread: Magpies
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Old 06-30-2013, 08:23 AM
CaberTosser's Avatar
CaberTosser CaberTosser is offline
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Calgary
Posts: 19,417
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There's some good Magpie threads on AO already. Treeguy had some great posts on the topic. I had good results from a magpie trap similar to TreeGuys, and will loan it to Calgary area AO members who have a truck to pick it up. Its a cylinder made of wire mesh with a top, and it has an entrance that's a tapered cone. They follow sparsely placed bait into the more heavily baited trap ( old fries and burger chunks highlighted by fast food wrappers worked well for me). Once they crouch down in the entrance tunnel and stand up again, they can't figure out how to crouch to exit. Its some visual cue thing I guess. Anyways, I had 6-7 in my trap, and then sent them on permanent holiday with the garbage man.

My second method (obviously done in a place where pellet guns are legal to use ) is to set a bait station visible from inside the with a good safe shooting line from a window you can remove the bug screen from. Usually this results in one shooting at a downward angle so stray shots would go into the lawn mere feet behind the offending bird. My bait station had a double layer of plywood behind it for added safety. I rationalized that the bait must be little and something they can't simply fly off with to keep a 'captive audience', so I used cat food.

Between these two techniques I restored peace to myself and our neighbors.

PM me for borrowing "Chateau Magpie"
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