problem hawks

C

CMC

New member
Question for you all.
how do you guys deal with trying to keep hawks away or dealing with hawks hanging around?
I was thinking about this the other day, which smaller birds put the most pressure on hawks? which smaller birds try the hardest to push hawks out of their home turf?
maybe trying to keep those smaller birds around would help keep the hawks occupied and slow them down on killing as many game birds and their chicks. maybe placing some housing for small birds or planting a few trees that keep the smaller (guard birds lol) close by.
thoughts?

while we are at it how do others deal with racoons, weasels, etc. besides the obvious of shooting them.
 
Bobwhite and pheasants evolved under the various pressures of a wide variety of predators. Control would have to be on a landscape scale in order to maintain the "control". Predators tend to fill voids, moving territories to make equilibrium on the landscape scale.

To mitigate raptors in an upland bird landscape, you have to work with the habitat. With upland birds, minimizing the cone of vulnerablitiy. In order to catch game birds, raptors must see their prey. The angle that they have to be at in relation to the game bird on the ground in order to see the game bird creates a cone relative to that angle and the height of the cover. Where raptors prosper, is where they can sit in a perch to hunt. By removing those perches from especially the nesting and brood-rearing habitat, the wildlife manager can minimize the size of the cone of vunerability. Also, the management of cover height can also increase the angle necessary to attain visibility and, thus, minimize the cone. All that being said, if you remove the natural and man-made perches from you habitat and manage it to provide adequate screening cover, you can minimize the success of raptors. Raptors must maintain a certain level of success in order to remain in an area. Being unable to do so, they move to habitats more conducive to hunting success.

A similar rationale can be used for mammalian predators. The primary 3 predators for upland nests in most of their range are: raccoon, skunk, and opossum. In general, these predators live on cavity dens. They also inhabit brush piles and cedar trees located in the nesting area. A habitat manager can mitigate this by removing cedars and known cavities from the nesting and brood-rearing habitat, thereby limiting living space and daybeds that allow them easy hunting access to those otherwise unaccessible areas.

Knowing what other prey attract predators to a habitat can be used to manage that habitat to reduce those populations (ie rodents) by keeping the habitat free of thatch buildup. A 3-4 year burning rotation will minimize those conditions and provide habitat most productive for game birds.

A concerted effort toward trapping or hunting furbearing predators will assist in the above goals, however, trapping or hunting to reduce predators over and extended time or on a landscape scale is financially unobtainable.
 
Last edited:
Thanks jmac, by keeping those raptors expending energy to hunt makes their threshhold of need higher. The result is in more unproductive habitat they will move on more readily. The easier you make it to hunt, the longer they will stay and the more likely they might become quail specialists and do significant damage to your population. This is one of many reasons why managers must modify their grazing practices during droughts in order to maintain a bird population. From a cattle perspective, keeping cover on the ground leads to better efficiency of rainfall collection where the cover increases infiltration while decreasing the effects of wind and sun on the soil surface. From a grass perspective, grazing any closer than 50% leads to loss of root mass. In order to replace that, the plant must rest the plant top. Failure to do that leads to a vicious circle of root loss, regrowing top, recropping, and further root loss. The managers that destock earliest come out of the drought earliest and return to profitable earliest.
 
Troy, I am beginning to think that my may know a thing or two :D

Those were two very helpful posts, thanks
 
I gotta get over your way Steve. Let me know of any days during this coming freeze that you're free!
 
Prairie Drifter said:
Thanks jmac, by keeping those raptors expending energy to hunt makes their threshhold of need higher. The result is in more unproductive habitat they will move on more readily. The easier you make it to hunt, the longer they will stay and the more likely they might become quail specialists and do significant damage to your population. This is one of many reasons why managers must modify their grazing practices during droughts in order to maintain a bird population. From a cattle perspective, keeping cover on the ground leads to better efficiency of rainfall collection where the cover increases infiltration while decreasing the effects of wind and sun on the soil surface. From a grass perspective, grazing any closer than 50% leads to loss of root mass. In order to replace that, the plant must rest the plant top. Failure to do that leads to a vicious circle of root loss, regrowing top, recropping, and further root loss. The managers that destock earliest come out of the drought earliest and return to profitable earliest.
Click to expand...

PD another Great post. Thank you. :thumbsup:
 
well said and makes sense. I have been working on limiting the amount of rabbits on my property for the reasons of coyotes. Less rabbits here the less the coyotes will spend time hunting here. also been having a great time running beagles with a few buddies clearing rabbits up.
One thing I have never thought of is limiting rodents. I do have lots of mice living here which would keep the hawks around (and coyotes for that matter). I don't believe burning in my area would be a good idea or allowed but I would have to look into it.

as for limiting perch locations for hawks that is a great idea, I can picture the trees that should be removed as I type this, I have seen the hawks using these trees many times.

the "cone of vulnerablitiy" you mentioned I guess would also increase or decrease in size depending on cover. So if brood-rearing cover is in high quality trees farther from these locations will proof useless to the hawks.

great info here thanks again, wish it wasn't dark here I would head out for a walk right now to have a look around
 
I am in town for the next 2 weeks, for the first time in a while.
Got some people in from out of town, but I should be able to get away for a while during the day.

BTW, got the burn plan doc. thanks
 
CMC, where is there? Again, the difference between losing a winter bird and a nest of eggs is a factor of 15 or so. Losing hens at all prior to nest success loses those same 15.
 
managing property for game birds is relatively new where I live, most lean towards deer and the odd DU habitat.

and this is my first year in trying to take this on so if I ask some questions that seem like common knowledge to some of you please bare with me as I am a rookie :laugh:

Pheasants are in very low populations here, If while driving down the road you spot a ringneck in a field you pull over and watch it with binos, they are that few and far between.

In the few steps I have taken I currently have had a few birds that have called my property home since Jan so I am on the right track and I hope with the help from this forum I will make my property even more bird friendly.
 
Troy, great information flow. I always look forward to your mini educational seminars on this forum. Thank you!:thumbsup:
 
CMC, sorry, where are you from? Might tweak our advice. Okie, we need to take a walk in cover some time!
 
Last edited:
Niagara falls, Ontario, Canada

One thing very different I am finding buy reading on here is the property sizes, Where a lot of what I am reading on here is dealing in 100, 200, plus acre lands around here everyone seems to own 50 to 100 acre lots.
myself I am dealing with 23 acres surrounded on 2 sides by crop fields, which seems to always be beans or corn. and on other side is another 25 plus acres (if I can get my hands on one day I will) which is owned by a railway company and they don't even look at it so I tend to use it as my own:)

My property is mostly scrub brush with the back corner (3 acres or so) taller hard woods. I have so far cleared 2 locations for plots which one was an upland mix and the other more clover based. I have a feeder running at the clover plot which the pheasants hit daily.
 
You do have some severe limitations on space. Bird numbers rely on adequate space in order to fulfill their maximum capability. The fact ownership is small could "theoretically" benefit you if the various habitat needs were accomplished in that "patchwork" pattern. However, if everything is in one or two habitat types or degenerated, then you're fighting for something positive in a sea of negative. Why SD and KS have the large numbers of birds frequently is because habitat happens on a landscape scale and the birds fill it. The bigger influence you can achieve, the bigger result you can see. As I have often said on here before, look at what is available over the fence and provide what is missing on the land you have influence over. In the bird game, a missing piece of the puzzle minimizes the size of the eventual picture.
 
Yes very limited.
From my "looking over the fence" I believe the most needed habitat is wintering area.

when the crops come down and snow starts, mostly around here all they have is hard woods and open fields. Most of the fields around here don't even have hedge rows anymore. Crop farmers can't seem to leave the hedge rows standing.
 
Just postulating from what you've said, you have beans and corn on 2 sides. you didn't say what the railroad property is composed of. Yours is scrub brush and timber. I would want to look at a soil survey and see what your base is before proceeding. I haven't heard much on nesting or brood-rearing other than your 1 plot in legumes. Some form of clump grass or spring/winter wheat for nesting would add if it's not available in a good measure. The thing is that you have to make them before you worry about keeping them through the winter. Gotta have all the pieces or you end up with abstract art instead of birds.
 
Prairie Drifter said:
you have to make them before you worry about keeping them through the winter.
Click to expand...
Very True..

railway property is basically the same as mine. scrub and very little timber. clover field off the one end of that property, also has one nice cattail filled swamp in it about an acre in size. kicked up a rooster in there the other day looking for rabbits. nice sight to see with limited numbers here.

the turkeys nest here but haven't ever bumped one from a nest to know where they nest on the property.

What I'm getting so far than is I should focus on brood-rearing and nesting habitat. you mentioned clump grasses and wheat. best route to go or any other options? I like the idea of wheat cause in turn it would be a great food source come winter. what about a plot of alphalfa ? but as you said a soil test would have to be done before something like that.

from what a gather this property use to be a farm way back years ago, some fences were found while working the ground for the 2 plots I have here now and some old
farm equipment out there too.
 
another thing I have thought of is connecting plots, nesting areas, roosting areas, etc with rows (20 to 30 feet wide) of raspberry bushes (or suggestions on other bush types).

would they use something like this for travel areas to keep out of sight of predators?
would also benefit on the food source side of it too.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top