Owl in a day's work

With crafty crows and magpies causing problems on one of his shoots, Mat Manning sets up an owl decoy to bring them to book

Crows and magpies are sharp-eyed opportunists that never miss out on the chance of an easy meal. Their talent for locating sources of high-protein nourishment and helping themselves makes them a constant problem on a small estate close to my home, where corvids have lambs, gamebirds and poultry to go at — not to mention the impact their nest-robbing habits must have on the songbirds that are trying to raise this spring’s clutches in the hedgerows and wooded areas.

Corvid control isn’t easy on this estate, as there are scant opportunities to make larger bags with the shotgun. Instead, I tend to keep them in check, or at least do my best to, by chipping away at them with regular airgun sorties. Bags are usually modest, but I believe my efforts have brought about a noticeable reduction in the harm they cause — the songbirds are definitely more abundant than they were when I began my corvid crackdown five or six years ago.

Although they are more than happy to devour the contents of other birds’ nests, crows and magpies are extremely defensive of their own territories during the spring months. Most corvids become very aggressive, often to the point that they forget their usual caution and distrust of anything unusual when an avian predator shows up close to their own nesting ground. This tendency to drop their guard when defending their patch can prove to be their downfall, and it is a trait that I was hoping to exploit in order to deal with some problematic birds that were stealing eggs from the chicken house.