Posted on 03/06/2015 4:21:54 PM PST by SJackson
Seeing fewer quail on your hunting lease? Maybe it's time you stop pointing the finger at coyotes, raccoons and fire ants and place the blame on your murderous herd of white-tailed deer.
Believe it or not, researchers have discovered deer will raid the happy homes of ground-nesting birds and enjoy a nice breakfast of eggs or fledglings.
Pam Pietz, a wildlife biologist at the U.S. Geological Survey's Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center in North Dakota, set up miniature video cameras that ran 24 hours a day to document the fate of grassland songbird nests, according to the USGS.
She was surprised to find deer raided as many nests as badgers, and more than weasels or red foxes.
Ah, but maybe the deer were simply eating the tasty forbs around the nest, and the baby birds just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Not likely, Pietz said. She pointed to a research project in Canada where songbirds were captured in above-ground mist nets. Wild deer walked up to the nets and gobbled up the easy prey.
(Excerpt) Read more at nola.com ...
Deer are members of the goat family. Goats eat most anything.
Not surprised.
Deer have rodent teeth. I don’t care about the hooves; they are giant rats. They are R.O.U.S.
In our part of Northern Ca., we have Columbian Blacktail deer.
In the past few years these deer are more aggressive and are eating things their ancestors never ate.
During this time period, our quail population has gone from several large covies to a small group.
Makes one wonder if our deer are causing the decrease
In our quail population.
!
Shoot the Bambi.
Deer hunting Beavers?
In our part of Northern Ca., we have Columbian Blacktail deer.
In the past few years these deer are more aggressive and are eating things their ancestors never ate.
During this time period, our quail population has gone from several large covies to a small group.
Makes one wonder if our deer are causing the decrease
In our quail population.
!
No, they’re not.
Find me a deer with upper incisors.
Ping to your list please.
In a former life I was a biologist at a national park. Some fellow biologists were doing some bird sampling with mist nets. Each morning they would check the nets, but only found several masses of goo in the nets. No birds. One day they spotted the culprits. Deer would come up and find the birds caught in the nets and eat them, leaving a gooey mess behind.
This article is racist. Imagine if we wrote “Black-tailed deer” eat quail eggs.
Oh the horror of it all!
News flash: Dan Quail had no comment on this story!
I’ve fed pigeons bits of hamburger from my fast food meal.
LOL
There was a thread here years ago about deer eating fish. If i remember correctly, it was somewhere in Michigan.
I have also seen a squirrel eat a recently deceased starling.
Dogs: nature’s deer, elk, &c. control. Yow know what happened once dogs (i.e. wolves) were reintroduced into Yellowstone? The aspen was finally able to recover.
For years, elk and other large herbivores had free reign over the land, as there were no large dogs to keep their numbers in check. (Coyotes aren’t large enough, and they were somewhat easy to defeat.) This resulted in them eating all the greenery they could get their hooves on. They ended up stunting the growth of aspens throughout the region.
Now, the aspen grows large, and there are now enough wolves to organise limited hunts each year, to minimise the risk to farmers and ranchers. (On the other hand, some wolves have been known to set up packs with random stray dogs. It’s not all bad, after all, they are the prototypical dog.)
Woof indeed.
Perhaps they are eating birds or eggs to meet a nutritional deficiency? Many species will eat afterbirth (e.g. sheep, goats, etc.). That is in large part instinctive (to reduce the probability that a predator will detect the scent of a newborn lamb or kid), but is also protein rich.
Yeah they are.
Goats are bovids, and deer are cervids.
Upland hunting is terrible everywhere. No pheasants. No quail. If it's the damn deer, we have to take out more damn deer. In places where deer hunting is not allowed, they multiply like flies. (e.g., Thinking Chester County, PA, where they are literally underfoot and dozens getting run over every winter night!)
Hey, I know! Let's put venison into Michelle's school lunch program in place of the runny mystery meat~!
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