Beautiful, cool and crisp Oklahoma morning. Overlooking my songbird feeders with a cup of coffee and ol’ Betsy by my side (BSA R10 .177) Smoking those black devils as they silently swoop in and try to take over the feed stations.
Playing sniper hide this morning with the starlings
- Thread starter orangeokie
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Hey Orange
Get some Starling decoys and put them out, helps hold others around longer, for more shooting time.
Use finger nail polish to color the beaks, fooled a Great Horned Owl that decided he wanted Din Din, snatched the decoy and flew off with it, glad I had a tethered to the post............LoL This is not the first I had a GHO strike a starling decoy.
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Love this post and will keep an eye on it. I agree with peaceful_ruler. Rifle sits on bipod on dining room table at the ready with perfect view out the window. I have two different species of woodpeckers and multiple cardinals that feed on peanut cakes I have in a feeder out back. The starlings terrorize them and must go. Using my Impact M3 .30 compact…devastating. Decoys sound interesting but don’t want to scare the friendlies away.
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@orangeokie The R10 is a perfect starling killer. Starlings deserve extreme prejudice, flying rodents.
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We had a lot more starlings over the winter around here in south central PA but now that spring(also grackles) has come they are harder to find. I think they are paired up now and don't flock together anymore. It seems like grackles live in flocks almost year around...
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Chris
Set the decoy's under the feeding area, they are after the spilled seeds,
if one lands on the feeder, ZAP and it joins the ones on the ground.
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Nvreloader thank you for your comment. I just ordered 6 fake crows from Amazon, kind of small for crows but I am hoping I can paint the beaks and feet to mimic a starling with half of them. I have an ICOTec remote game call with crow distress, who knows. I have glint guards on two on my scopes which I believe has helped, they are so skittish.
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I did the same and just deployed six of them. Con you see all six. Note the live Red Bellied Woodpecker feeding on the suet log.
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Within five minutes I had a single alight on the fence, then fly off. Five minutes late he returned with a buddy, and it didn't fare so well for one of them.
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That looks great!! My decoys arrived today. I think I may go to the dollar store tomorrow and look for yellow figurenail polish and give some color to the beaks. Once I get them set up in a couple of days I will post a picture. Rain here for a couple of days. Appreciate your input and photos, thank you.
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Chris
If you leave the decoys out at night make sure that they are tethered to an unmovable object, using dark colored line, Great Horned Owls love Starling for snacks at night time.
If you leave the decoys out at night make sure that they are tethered to an unmovable object, using dark colored line, Great Horned Owls love Starling for snacks at night time.
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Thank you for the advice Nvreloader. I watched out the window today late morning for about an hour and reduced the population by nine. Two fell into a brush pile but the others dropped under the feeder which is at 55 yards. I also got the decoys painted up and am hoping to try them tomorrow afternoon. I will not leave them out at night because something is coming in durning the night to take what’s still there.
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I print out full-size pictures of starlings, cut them out and stick them to my fence near the feeders..and 1 or 2 in my window for the flier bys.. believe it or not, it brings them in
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Chris,
Look at good color photo's, then put some dots/strips on the breast, make 75% females and the rest males, it's loving time right now, then ZAP them all. A cheap bird house with a 1-1/2" hole and a perch 1" under the hole (sheet rock screw), then set it up against a big tree for back stop, every starling around will check it out along with all the Hosp sparrows, Zap them all.........
Have fun.