Home » Plants & Animals » Birdwatching » Pest Birds

Pest Birds

© Terrie Murray

A week or so ago I was faced with the unpleasant task of deciding what to do about the European Starlings which have gradually taken over my yard. At first they didn't bother me, because I only saw one or two at a time, but then they nested in my apple tree and produced three hungry, noisy fledglings. The five of them spent all day, every day, raiding my supposedly starling-proof suet feeder. They were noisy, messy, and aggressive towards the other birds which tried to come to my feeders. I know that many backyard birders will kill starlings and/or destroy their nests with no hesitation at all, and it's legal to do so because as an introduced species they are not protected by the Migratory Bird Act. I'm not into killing birds, though, so I have basically tolerated them. This year, however, their aggressiveness and noise, and to a lesser extent the bird poop they began leaving all over my deck, began to make me a bit cranky, so I decided to take some aggressive steps of my own. I took down the suet feeder. By doing so the starlings have stopped hanging around my feeder tree, but it also means that I no longer get downy woodpeckers or bushtits, both of which also came for the suet. That makes me sad.

One of the tricks about backyard birdwatching and bird feeding is being able to manipulate what you feed so that you attract what you want to see and yet don't attract pest species that you don't want. Pests can include starlings, house sparrows, grackles, blackbirds, pigeons, or other "undesirables." Now don't start writing to me and telling me these birds have a right to eat too. Of course they do! But they are all highly adaptive birds, and they'll find food elsewhere.

Commercial seed mixes which contain millet and corn will attract some of these pest species. One way to control their numbers is to offer only black oil sunflower seed in your feeders. Another thing you can try, if you have a soft heart and you want to accommodate everybody, is to have a separate feeding area with cracked corn and a cheap seed mix, well away from your regular feeders. If you're lucky, the grackles, starlings, blackbirds and house sparrows will choose the alternative feeding area and will leave your regular feeders alone. I even heard of one backyard feeder who purposefully fed her house sparrows in an open area of her yard, making them easy targets for the resident sharp-shinned hawk, which then left her other feeder birds alone! That's rather an extreme method of pest control, but she seemed pleased with her solution. Other birders I've talked to have switched from sunflower seeds to safflower seeds as a way to discourage "pest birds," and that has had good results as well.

The copyright of the article Pest Birds in Birdwatching is owned by Terrie Murray. Permission to republish Pest Birds in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.