pauwen signs out again
Hi Pauwen.
I don't know about them waiting for their prey to die but when they are on the hunt the shear speed (200 mph) when they hit there prey is usually enough to kill their victim.
Graham
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pauwenI noticed this Morning a peregrine on the telephone wire. It stayed there for about 20 mins. It then flew down on our grass behind some trees. Dinnertime iv been down there and There is a half eaten seagull. Was he waiting that 20 mins for his victim to die.
Hi Pauwen,
Have just done a bit of reading with regard to the perigrine and it seems they will take carrion if times are hard.
I can imagine as you say that the seagull would not have been a pretty sight, but nature is not always pretty. In the wild survival comes first.
Hi Pauwen
Not as a general rule but raptors can be as opportunistic as anything. It may have come across a recent casualty and was waiting for the coast to become clear before getting a free meal. It could, equally, have been disturbed while dining on its own kill, perhaps by a Fox ,and retired to a safe distance. Normally Peregrines will deal with their own kills promptly and cart them off to a favourite plucking spot. If the prey is too big to carry it may even have a "picnic" on the spot. A gull larger than a Black headed may to too heavy to transport especially if the Peregrine is a male.
Female Peregrines are capable of striking down surprisingly large prey items. Ravens and Gt Black Backed Gulls occasionally fall victim. If, however, the Peregrine gets into a ruck on the ground with a Raven it can ever be certain who will end up on the menu. Sometimes a Raven, if not seriously wounded, can gain the upper hand.....
Every day a little more irate about bird of prey persecution, and I have a cat - Got a problem with that?
i am sorry to have to say this but no birds of pray do not wait for there victim to die they get eaten alive and suffer a verry painfull death
OK its a pigeon but it the same family as a dove, This was a wild event, I just filmed it. I did not feed the bird to the Sparrowhawk.
these are just a few as you can see they are eaten alive
life is to short
Hi Karl,
It's nature I'm afraid Karl. It is sometimes distressing to watch, but sparrowhawks have to eat or they would die of starvation.
Cheers, Linda.
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yes i know and i do understand but i think that there are getting to be to many birds of pray i used to give money all the time to protect our birds but to find that most of the money is spent on birds of pray then to have the birds of pray come and take all the birds out of my garden which i have spent hundreds of pounds paying for food to put out on my bird table for years then to watch them get eaten i now give my money to cancer research and children in need as its a better cause
I have seen my female sparrowhawk standing on the collared dove it has caught & took to the ground. I don't know if this was to suffocate & wait for death or just to check that nothing was around to put her at risk. I was watching from the window so maybe she was aware of me.
My cornsnake (( hugs)) his mouse sometimes but it is already dead (frozen defrosted) it's just natural instinct.
Exactly, Sparrow without going into 'descriptive' details that is how nature is
That is enough for me to know.
Regards
Kathy and Dave
Sparrow Hi Karl, It's nature I'm afraid Karl. It is sometimes distressing to watch, but sparrowhawks have to eat or they would die of starvation.
here is somthink to think about on the rspb sites i have read that there are 1404 pairs of peregrines in the uk on 1 site another site says 2000 pairs did not cheack on other birds of pray but if you work on 1404 pairs thats 2808 birds they eat 3 to 4 dirds a day ok so if they eat 3 a day that is 8424 aday how long will there food chain last and with all the other birds of pray eating birds now wonder the birds are going its a bit like fishing boats out at sea catching fish soon ther wil be none
Karl, there have always been birds of prey. They are not something new. Yet we still have our birds. This is why they lay so many eggs and produce so many babies. It's all part of the circle of life.
I suspect not as most birds of prey don't have the luxuary of having the time to wait! They have to eat quick and if that means tucking in when the prey is still alive then so be it, if they don't start eating as quickly as they can they more they may lose should a competitor such as a crow arrives to attempt to steal the kill.
And as for "too many birds of prey", predators are limited by the amount of prey they have available, not the other way around. Most hunts don't even end in a kill, the prey usually escapes. Predators actually help bird populations by removing the old, sick and weak animals which later competition for others of the same species in more difficult times - such as what we are having now, and prey are adapted to cope with natural losses from predators, bad weather etc. The reason why so many birds are declining is because of people, not because of the predators that they have co-existed with long before we appeared to destroy their habitats. Most birds of prey are recovering from extreme persecution, followed by the devestation of DDT so of course we are seeing more, we should be this shows that their population is starting to recover after we nearly wiped them out. Birds of prey are something wild birds have always lived with and to accuse them of damaging bird populations is, in my opinion, nothing more than an attempt to place blame on another species for the results of our actions.
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I couldn't agree with you more, KaiTai. It's worth remembering that most birds eat other animals at some point in their lives - I don't suppose snails "enjoy" the experience of being smashed repeatedly against a stone by a song thrush, for example.
I've been lucky enough to see birds of prey make kills on a few occasions, and in the vast majority of cases the unlucky victims actually do not last for more than the few seconds it takes for the raptor to bear its prey to the ground. Small birds and mammals are usually killed almost immediately by the talons, or dispatched by the beak within seconds. For real cruelty and indifference no animal on earth can rival humans. Think of a hundred live parrots stuffed in a suitcase and smuggled halfway around the world with no light, air, food or water, or a puffin drowning in an oil slick.