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Post by whartonrattrapper on Mar 27, 2013 8:25:15 GMT -5
My trapping partners daughter is doing a term paper on birds of prey. I told her we could get some pictures of an Eagles nest we pass on our way down the river. To my amazement when we appraoched the tree where the nest was it looked like a graveyard. Muskrat and Mink skulls and bones everywhere!
I used to marvel at them when we would see them flying over while trapping. I now have a bit of disdain for them. lol
On another note several years ago I caught a mink in a 110 a hundred yards from the nest, the tracks were fresh in the snow where he walked to his death. the only thing was the mink and trap vanished in thin air. I guess that mystery is now solved. I know they say the Snowy Owl will follow a trap line up in canada. I can only hope these Eagles don't get any ideas. lol
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Post by gimtilly on Mar 27, 2013 8:29:12 GMT -5
I read a long thread on Tman the other day about birds of prey eating or taking animals caught on drowner sets. Sorry, no bird pics..
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Post by whartonrattrapper on Mar 27, 2013 9:10:15 GMT -5
If I new how to attach a picture I would post a pic of a snow owl that visited Otsego county in 2011.
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catman4
If your to busy to hunt & trap then your to busy...
Posts: 745
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Post by catman4 on Mar 27, 2013 17:28:31 GMT -5
I would go to that tree and look around you may get lucky and find your 110......
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Post by trappermac on Mar 27, 2013 18:12:14 GMT -5
Keep in mind that the bald eagle, unlike most birds of prey will eat carrion. Many of the furbearing animals bones you see at a nest site can be road kills or such they picked up. From a predatory standpoint they are mainly fish catchers but also eat dead fish. But, they will also take what they can catch if hungry (geese are an example). Also these bones you are seeing are probably an accumulation over many years since the same eagles use the same nest site for as long as they are alive.
Snowy owls mainly feed on small mammals such as lemmings up to hare size and sometimes birds. The horned owl is more likely to attack and attempt to take a small fox, skunk, possum - something in a trap.
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Post by silverfox on Mar 28, 2013 4:25:23 GMT -5
ditto on the carrion, i have had 4 Bald eagles (2 adults, 2 adolesents still working towards full white plummage) working my "carcass dump" all winter, best part is its visible from my living room recliner so i get to chill in the warmth of the wood stove with my favorite beverage and watch em do their thing for hours on end!!
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tmc
#2 Newhouse
Posts: 2,447
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Post by tmc on Mar 28, 2013 17:51:22 GMT -5
When I was a kid, the before-school section of the trapline was always checked in the dark. One section of a small stream out in the open saw many a muskrat that I caught eaten by owls some years. Other years, no trouble.
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Post by arrow1 on Mar 28, 2013 18:31:50 GMT -5
This hawk visited me in Iowa several times for lunch. Can anyone ID?
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Post by erict on Mar 28, 2013 20:21:33 GMT -5
That's a Rough-legged Hawk. Probably more common than they were earlier in the century - below is a segment from Raptors as Vermin: Raptors and other vermin (i.e. harmful or objectionable animals) were unprotected in Pennsylvania throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Persecution of raptors in the commonwealth increased substantially in the latter half of the 1800s, when an overwhelming majority of rural residents considered raptors highly injurious. By 1885, animosity toward predatory birds had intensified to the point that the state placed a 50-cent bounty on the heads of all diurnal birds of prey, as well as on all owls. During the next two years, 180,000 scalps were sent to the state capital in Harrisburg, by which time increased populations of destructive rodents and insects, together with fraudulent claims and a drain on the state treasury, induced the Pennsylvania legislature to repeal what by then many were calling the "fool hawk law" (Hornaday 1914). Raptors remained unprotected in the state until 1937, when all species of diurnal birds of prey, except for three accipiters (sharp-shinned hawk; Cooper's hawk and northern goshawk. Unfortunately, the new law was not particularly popular among Pennsylvania's hunters and farmers, and scant enforcement within the state continued to plague so-called "protected" species well into the 1960s. A bounty established on northern goshawks in 1929 was lifted in 1951, but it was not until 1969 that Pennsylvania granted this species, along with sharp-shinned and Cooper's hawks, full protection. Great horned owls remained unprotected statewide until March 1972. The United States and several foreign signatories ratified an amended Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. Since then, all species of diurnal birds of prey and owls have been protected in Pennsylvania....
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Post by gimtilly on Mar 28, 2013 22:28:54 GMT -5
Keep in mind that the bald eagle, unlike most birds of prey will eat carrion. Our proud National icon.
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