birding-aus

Grey Butherbirds Eating Pet Budgie

To:
Subject: Grey Butherbirds Eating Pet Budgie
From: brian fleming <>
Date: Mon, 03 Jun 2013 10:37:59 +1000
When I was a child we kept canaries in a large wire-fronted cage on a sunny back wall. We were always warned that a Grey Butcherbird might attack them - the method being to fly at or perch on the cage- the frightened inmates would attempt to escape by fluttering at the wire and would then be stabbed by the Butcherbird's beak. Sometimes the Butcherbird would succeed in pulling the victim out through the wires, sometimes it couldn't manage this. It was a good argument for fine-mesh cage wires. We never had any casualties.

One bird-keeping neighbour shot Butcherbirds with an air-gun, and encouraged his son to shoot at them with a shanghai. I would expect similar predatory behaviour from Currawongs, but in the 1940s and '50s they were never seen in Melbourne suburbs. Butcherbirds were also accused of carrying off newly hatched chickens and ducklings.

Anthea Fleming

On 3/06/2013 7:13 AM, Scott Ryan wrote:
Hi Matthew & All,
I've also heard of Butcherbirds killing small aviary birds in the way you suggest. 
I've also known mice to eat remains of birds if the budgie had died, possibly from 
some another cause & they are able to get into some amazingly tight places. 
Just another line of thought
Regards,
Scott

Sent from my iPhone

On 02/06/2013, at 7:31 PM, Matthew Roach <> 
wrote:

Hi Everyone,

An acquaintance of ours had two pet budgies in a normal wire cage in their garden, in 
south-eastern Melbourne, and saw the two birds happily in the cage one afternoon, 
before returning inside for the night. In the morning, they found one Budgie still 
alive in the cage, with the other budgies remains on the floor of the cage; it had 
been killed and mostly eaten. We assumed that it wasn’t the other Budgie who 
did this, and seeing as the cage probably could not have been accessed by a cat or 
fox, we thought that a butcherbird may have been the culprit. They are found in their 
garden, but it must have stuck its beak through the gaps in the cage in order to get 
it, yet this must have been a bit of an effort.  Has this behaviour been observed 
before?

Regards,
Matthew Roach.



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