Thread: Identify endangered bird species in Glen Iris 3146 for birdhouse specifications

Build some blackbird traps, plenty of help on the net. Horrible, pesky, messy damn things.

create a 'nest' for blackbirds/starlings, so once in they get electrocuted and then fall out the bottom. You would create a market overnight.
While your at it another for swallows would be a winner.

Basic InformationScientific Name:
Turdus merula


Featured bird groups:
Birds behaving badly
Top 40 Bird Songs
Introduced birds


Atlas Number:
991



What does it look like?Description:
The Common Blackbird was introduced to Australia at Melbourne in the 1850s. The male is the 'black' bird, with deep orange to yellow bill, a narrow yellow eye-ring and dark legs. The female is a brown bird, with some streaks or mottling, and has a dark bill and legs. Immature birds are similar to the female with lighter underparts.



Similar species:
The Common Blackbird is not readily confused with other 'black' birds as it is much smaller than most Australian birds with a similar colouring and has a distinctive yellow eye-ring.




Where does it live?Distribution:
The Common Blackbird, was originally confined to Melbourne and Adelaide, but has gradually expanded its range throughout south-eastern Australia, both on the coast and inland, as far north as Sydney, and including Tasmania and the Bass Strait islands.



Habitat:
The Common Blackbird is most often found in urban areas and surrounding localities, but has successfully moved into bushland habitats. It is often seen in orchards, vineyards and gardens, as well as along roadsides and in parks.




What does it do?Feeding:
The Common Blackbird eats insects, earthworms, snails, spiders and a range of seeds and fruit. It mainly forages on the ground, probing and scratching at leaf litter, lawns and soil.



Breeding:
The Common Blackbird builds a cup-shaped nest of dried grass, bound with mud, and lined with fine grasses. It is usually placed in a tree, shrub or low bush, but they will also use tree hollows.




Living with usThe Common Blackbird can be a pest in orchards, parks and gardens, being rather destructive of ground vegetation, particularly backyard vegetable patches.








Yep they deserve to live but back in England where they cane from.
24 blackbirds baked in a pie sounds good

I've been trapping and dispatching Indian Mynas for a few years now. Fifty of them so far. Lucky Dog doggy treats to attract them and carbon monoxide to kill them. Takes about 30 seconds to kill them.

I use one of these traps. They are absolutely brilliant. Might need to be scaled up for blackbirds and you would need to find an appropriate bait.

Building birdhouses for endangered birds is a great idea, but killing their predators will also help them.

Hi Barry, are you sure it was a Common Blackbird? It sound more like the behaviour of a Grey Butcherbird (a native species common to suburban Melbourne). Blackbirds are mostly worm, snail and insect eaters. Grey Butcherbirds rob nests of nestlings and will kill other birds up to the size of a Blackbird.

As far as endangered species in the Glen Iris area go, there aren't many that breed in the area that are hollow nesters. Swift Parrots transit through between Tassie (where they breed) and NSW, so nothing is needed for them. You could try building pardalote-sized nesting boxes for Striated and Spotted Pardalotes. They should be too small for Starlings, Indian Mynas and Rainbow or Musk Lorikeets to take over. What might be better though is microbat habitat boxes. Latrobe Uni's Wildlife Sanctuary has some designs that might give you species specific ideas.

Basically, in Glen Iris, the limiting factor on rarer bird species is not so much the absence of hollow nesting boxes, but the overall lack of suitable habitat in general, leading to lack of shelter, food and appropriately sized territory. Add in to that the way our parklands are designed to suit Noisy Miners (which chase away and kill smaller bird species) and our tree plantings to suit lorikeets (which out-compete other species for nest boxes, and the smaller species don't stand a chance. I've been birdwatching in Melbourne's inner, eastern and northern suburbs for around 30 years now, and its sad to see the decline in our honeyeaters and smaller bush birds over that time. Most of those species are not hollow-nesters, so nesting boxes won't help them. Nesting/habitat boxes for mammals is likely to be more helpful for rare/uncommon wildlife in Glen Iris and surrounding suburbs. Widescale understorey planting with structural diversity and large patches of thorny/thick undergrowth is what would be most helpful for Melbourne's smaller/rarer birds.

Originally Posted by barrysumpter

Black birds crowing is really starting to bug us.
Wife just watched a blackbird attack and carry off a smaller bird.

Hi Barry, on a re-read, do you mean the Little Raven? Larger than a magpie? I think we are getting confused because there is a much smaller bird called the Common Blackbird as well - but I don't think it would be the one killing and taking away other birds. That sounds a lot like Little Raven behaviour.

If it is a Little Raven, they are a native bird, protected as such, and there's not a huge amount we can build out of wood to protect nests from them. The best protection for bird nests from predation is thick, diverse, messy understorey plantings, something we don't have a lot of in Melbourne's parks and gardens.