Larson Traps

ycbm said:
I'm confused. The first time I ever heard about a Larsen trap was on this forum, after moving away from hill sheep farming country where everyone around me lambed outdoors. There were masses of crows/rooks which nested in the little spinneys, nobody trapped them. I would normally see them sitting on the roof of my barn every day. The occasional weak lamb or sick ewe was attacked and although it's not nice to see, it is nature. We had a ton of ground nesting birds and "ground nesting" hare, too.

So what is it that means some farmers "need" to use Larsen taps and others don't?
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I would be astonished if at least some of your previous neighbours didn't use traps on occasion - they may not have discussed it with you, nor had the traps somewhere you or others could easily see. They are sold in significant numbers and very widely used, even by the RSPB (and the National Trust) but most I would say are sited discreetly - because those that use them recognise they are unpleasant things. I actually think it would be nigh on impossible to know who used them and who didnt, especially because many people, like us will only use them for short periods of time/occasionally. There are plenty of records of Larsen traps in the Peak district - often being destroyed by those who hate them and feel happy to trespass and damage them.
 
ycbm said:
I'm confused. The first time I ever heard about a Larsen trap was on this forum, after moving away from hill sheep farming country where everyone around me lambed outdoors. There were masses of crows/rooks which nested in the little spinneys, nobody trapped them. I would normally see them sitting on the roof of my barn every day. The occasional weak lamb or sick ewe was attacked and although it's not nice to see, it is nature. We had a ton of ground nesting birds and "ground nesting" hare, too.

So what is it that means some farmers "need" to use Larsen taps and others don't?
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Legalities around controlling corvids have changed and rightly so with regards to some of them to my mind.
Also if other food stuffs are easy the corvids in that area may have had their numbers kept in check well enough that they didn't predate on the living.
Larsen traps are usually as palo 1 says discreetly places so offence and meddling are kept o a minimum, many places July use them for a few short weeks to reduce the amount of birds avaliable to breed that year and keep numbers down.
 
ycbm said:
I'm confused. The first time I ever heard about a Larsen trap was on this forum, after moving away from hill sheep farming country where everyone around me lambed outdoors. There were masses of crows/rooks which nested in the little spinneys, nobody trapped them. I would normally see them sitting on the roof of my barn every day. The occasional weak lamb or sick ewe was attacked and although it's not nice to see, it is nature. We had a ton of ground nesting birds and "ground nesting" hare, too.

So what is it that means some farmers "need" to use Larsen taps and others don't?
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At a guess commercial shoots or conservation?
They are used here because the owner/GK are very big on grey partridge conservation and the numbers are doing really well the past few years.
 
palo1 said:
I would be astonished if at least some of your previous neighbours didn't use traps on occasion - they may not have discussed it with you, nor had the traps somewhere you or others could easily see.
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I rode or walked all over their land either hacking or walking to and from neighbours. I lived within them, I saw them all the time tending their flocks. They wouldn't have hidden a legal activity from me, they were quite open about the realities of farming. I knew when they took spades into a wood and dug out badgers. I didn't report them, we were overrun with badgers and they were taking lambs. There is absolutely no way that they were using larsen traps.
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poiuytrewq said:
At a guess commercial shoots or conservation?
They are used here because the owner/GK are very big on grey partridge conservation and the numbers are doing really well the past few years.
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Oh for sure, you never see a corvid up on the shooting moors. The gamekeeper asked me for permission to kill my magpies, two miles away from the shoots. I refused.
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ycbm said:
I rode or walked all over their land either hacking or walking to and from neighbours. I lived within them, I saw them all the time tending their flocks. They wouldn't have hidden a legal activity from me, they were quite open about the realities of farming. I knew when they took spades into a wood and dug out badgers. I didn't report them, we were overrun with badgers and they were taking lambs. There is absolutely no way that they were using larsen traps.
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Ok. I cannot imagine thinking that my neighbors who can also ride, walk, cycle, retrieve their own sheep on parts of our land etc would have any clue at all whether we had a trap I use, or where that might be located. It's also just not something that comes up in neighbourly conversation. Literally no-one has ever provoked that subject, including new folks in the area who may feel strongly about their use. It's just odd, to me, that you can be so certain about this!
 
ycbm said:
I'm confused. The first time I ever heard about a Larsen trap was on this forum, after moving away from hill sheep farming country where everyone around me lambed outdoors. There were masses of crows/rooks which nested in the little spinneys, nobody trapped them. I would normally see them sitting on the roof of my barn every day. The occasional weak lamb or sick ewe was attacked and although it's not nice to see, it is nature. We had a ton of ground nesting birds and "ground nesting" hare, too.

So what is it that means some farmers "need" to use Larsen taps and others don't?
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Not sure how widely used they are by farmers, in my experience it’s more a gamekeeper’s tool. There’s no doubt our ewes and lambs benefit from their use on the estate but that doesn’t mean I agree with them.
 
palo1 said:
Ok. I cannot imagine thinking that my neighbors who can also ride, walk, cycle, retrieve their own sheep on parts of our land etc would have any clue at all whether we had a trap I use, or where that might be located. It's also just not something that comes up in neighbourly conversation. Literally no-one has ever provoked that subject, including new folks in the area who may feel strongly about their use. It's just odd, to me, that you can be so certain about this!
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I'm certain because stuff like that did come up in my neighbourly conversation over 31 years. I walked or rode almost every inch of their land. I was close friends with these people, I sat in their houses drinking tea for hours, I helped them lamb, I saw what was in their barns and on the back of their trucks. They didn't use larsen traps.
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Burnttoast said:
They are wildlife. And had coexisted with other species for millennia before we got involved.

I used to do a lot of hedge surveying for various bodies, academe and conservation, and in my areas there was almost no habitat that was suitable for passerine nesting in terms of being safe from corvids. All that's required in such cases is that people stop managing the countryside to within an inch of its life, allow inconvenient corners to scrub up, cease flailing hedges annually until you can put an arm through them and shake hands with someone on the other side etc.
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There is plenty of that. Still too many magpies, crows and other bird pests.
 
I’ve found a crow/rook attacking one of our bantams. Let the girls of the Egluu into their run and went to feed ponies and poo pick. Came back and heard the girls shouting and saw a crow in the run. Thankfully chicken was playing dead and she’s up but looks shellshocked and has blood on her face.

Have shut them in the Egluu.

Thoughts and prayers for Feathers McGraw Junior.

I guess we’ll now need to fully net the top of the chicken run.
 
If you have watched a pair of magpies working a hedge (and we have proper hedges here) dragging out and eating the fledglings while their poor parents try to distract them or drive them off it would diminish the sentimentality about them.
Or saw next doors sheep who had her tongue and eyes removed during a difficult lambing.
Larsen traps are not nice, kind or pretty, but well managed imo the good offsets the bad.

ETA but this is an annual conservation on here that much like hunting debate never achieves anything.

People are obsessed by big, sexy, predators.
Little brown birds are boring.
 
ycbm said:
I'm confused. The first time I ever heard about a Larsen trap was on this forum, after moving away from hill sheep farming country where everyone around me lambed outdoors. There were masses of crows/rooks which nested in the little spinneys, nobody trapped them. I would normally see them sitting on the roof of my barn every day. The occasional weak lamb or sick ewe was attacked and although it's not nice to see, it is nature. We had a ton of ground nesting birds and "ground nesting" hare, too.

So what is it that means some farmers "need" to use Larsen taps and others don't?
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I'm just coming back to this having looked at some other stuff. I think some but not all farmers/gamekeepers decide they need to use a trap in an area because of the way that certain birds become a particular nuisance; there is some really interesting information about what might influence particular birds to engage with behaviors that threaten songbirds and lambs. The vast majority are, it seems magpies but crows to a lesser extent too.

Where certain gn birds or threatened songbirds are particularly at risk, landowners might deploy traps slightly differently and perhaps to a larger extent. When we use a trap it is because we have nuisance magpies & OH will notice that. The rest of the time our magpies are not at risk; I hadn't realised that some of the nuisance behavior for us, is very bird specific but that explains certain things!

We have Marsh Tits (very rare) and Curlew (our most threatened bird) and those species literally face extinction if every effort to support them isn't made. Occasional, short term use of a legal trap seems entirely proportionate to me and that is how our neighbours who are developing habitat for these species deploy their traps.
 
Equi said:
I have a group of jackdaws that live here. They have destroyed the eves of my shed and leave unbelievable amounts of poo over the whole place. The smell is awful and it’s a bit alfred Hitchcock to walk nearby. We have tried various methods to discourage them but they don’t care about that. They are regularly found on the backs of my ponies pulling out hair in shedding season but they have never yet came into the stables and feed room (where the swollow nest) or came anywhere near the chicken house either. I’d rather they were not here, but I’m also not going to do anything about it. I have had to dispatch a few that have gotten injured/bashed into windows but I could never just take a healthy one out.

Every single one is called jack dawson.

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Apparantly Jackdaws rarely become a nuisance to songbirds and lambs in the way that magpies and crows do
They are brilliant, clever and very social but I can imagine the mess and noise!
 
twiggy2 said:
I agree they are intelligent and social birds but how else do numbers get controlled?
They do a lot of harm to wildlife.
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Isn't that just nature, and aren't corvids wildlife? All animals have their part to play and corvids do a lot of good too. We should stop mucking about with the balance of nature, we've already done more harm than good with a lot of species.
 
exracehorse said:
There are lots of cages with single crows or rooks, on our hacking routes this year. What is the point of it ? Does the bird just die inside? Bearing in mind it’s 26 degrees. Or does the landowner dispatch.
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Yet if someone was keeping a bird like that in their back garden, they'd be reported.
No qualms with controlling the population, but that is just cruel.
 
Clodagh said:
People are obsessed by big, sexy, predators.
Little brown birds are boring.
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☹️

Look at the field behind our house! Full of them, they had a bird scarer last week but I haven’t heard it today.
 

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Nasicus said:
Yet if someone was keeping a bird like that in their back garden, they'd be reported.
No qualms with controlling the population, but that is just cruel.
Nasicus said:
Yet if someone was keeping a bird like that in their back garden, they'd be reported.
No qualms with controlling the population, but that is just cruel.
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Sorry - not sure why we have a double quote, but there are no legal restrictions on the way any bird in captivity - canaries, budgies, finches etc is kept in the UK other than that they should be able to stretch their wings. That is dire and does mean that under the Animal Welfare legislation, a Larson trap of a suitable size would be considered ok. I agree that confining a wild bird is cruel which is why it must be both necessary and for the shortest possible duration. Very small Larson traps should be illegal - there is no place for them at all.
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Predator control study - link

That link shows the difference for ground nesting birds when corvids (and foxes) are and are not controlled on the same piece of ground of a set number of years. The ground, habitat and flora didn't change during the study period.


Ten years after predator control ceased, there were dramatic changes. Abundance of Carrion Crow and Red Fox (measured by scat index) significantly increased by 78% and 127% respectively. Concurrently, there were significant declines in several ground-nesting bird species including:



  • Golden Plover (-81%)
  • Snipe (-76%)
  • Lapwing (-58%)
  • Curlew (-24%)
  • Red Grouse (-74%)
  • Grey Partridge and Black Grouse became locally extinct in the study plots
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My mother used to have larsen traps in her garden, along with squirrel traps. She got a new neighbour who was actively feeding and encouraging the things. A birthday cake was made with a couple of gravestones and tally counts around the base.
 
rabatsa said:
My mother used to have larsen traps in her garden, along with squirrel traps. She got a new neighbour who was actively feeding and encouraging the things. A birthday cake was made with a couple of gravestones and tally counts around the base.
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The cake was given to the neighbour?
 
druid said:
Predator control study - link

That link shows the difference for ground nesting birds when corvids (and foxes) are and are not controlled on the same piece of ground of a set number of years. The ground, habitat and flora didn't change during the study period.
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Presumably though, when the prey species supply ran out the predator numbers would fall (lack of food for young) so it would balance eventually.

If you stop and think nature is remarkably adept at sorting itself out, it's only when humans interfere and demonise some species while defending others that the natural balance is upset.
 
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3OldPonies said:
Presumably though, when the prey species supply ran out the predator numbers would fall (lack of food for young) so it would balance eventually.

If you stop and think nature is remarkably adept at sorting itself out, it's only when humans interfere and demonise some species while defending others that the natural balance is upset.
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In the 10 years 2 of the study species had gone locally extinct. How do you think they would repopulate without any human involvement?!
 
druid said:
In the 10 years 2 of the study species had gone locally extinct. How do you think they would repopulate without any human involvement?!
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Without looking I can't remember all the species on your list, but I do remember some game birds who may or may not have had viable long term local populations anyway especially if they had been introduced anyway for 'sporting' purposes. Locally extinct is a difficult term to get to grips with; today I heard that blackbirds in London and the south east are at risk of this because of a mosquito borne virus that hasn't previously been seen in this country. How do you want to sort that out? Aerial spraying against the mozzies?

Regardless of these arguments, those traps are inhumane, cruel and should be banned.
 
I never seen anything like it here in Switzerland, it's really cruel.

I can tell you that if those cages existed, people would go and open them !

I would be the first to do it too !

Sorry but there must be other ways....
 
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