Help A Bird Today

Rodenticides are one of the leading causes of death in birds of prey. This is because many of today's rat poisons are anticoagulants. These lead to internal bleeding, dehydration, and a slow death for whatever eats the poison. After binding to the cells they also pass up the food chain to anything that consumes a poisoned animal so, for example, if your cat eats the mouse, the cat is then poisoned. If a fox eats the dying cat, the fox is poisoned. If an eagle then eats the fox it's now the fourth animal poisoned from this one pellet and so on... 

Considering rodents are the primary food source for most birds of prey, one poisoned mouse is often the death of an entire family raptors.

If you have mice or rats in your home, a better solution is to set snap or live traps inside, and create a safe, hospitable habitat that attracts their natural predators outside.

If you'd like to learn more, here is a list of sites with further information on the subject.

It can be fun to see hawks and owls in your own back yard. How do you attract them? Like anything else, birds need access to abundant  food and shelter. 

Different species have different needs. Some build nests in trees or on ledges, others nest in cavities. For the latter, there are ample resources for nesting boxes and placement recommendations.

Feeding birds of prey is different. Unlike song birds who you can put seeds out for, raptors need a living food supply thriving and available in their environment. You need to attract their prey... planting native shrubs and flowers provide essential resources for food and shelter to smaller wildlife. Keeping the majority of your lawn mowed not only helps to deter rodents from coming up and into your home, it also creates an open space where terrestrial predators can't hide and small game must cross between one resource and another -- an ideal hunting setup  for a bird of prey!

For links to more resources, click here.

Did you know that a single lead fragment, smaller than a grain of rice, is enough to kill a bald eagle? This is such a small thing that many don't think about it; lead fragments are often missed in the discarded bits left behind after field dressing game or on a piece of line that broke off while fishing. Once ingested, these are nearly always a death sentence to birds.

The danger isn't just in the larger bits we discard though. Lead is a soft metal and shatters easily. In 2022, a game warden with the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation  found that, on average, 40% of the lead in each bullet splintered off on impact, scattering fragments of this poison through the target. Once in the blood stream (after eating the contaminated meat) lead does not leave the body. It continues to build up in the system with each new exposure.

So what can you do to protect both birds and yourselves from lead poisoning? Easy, switch to other types of ammunition and fishing weights .

Check out these links to learn more.