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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