If birds are poisoned, does it act quickly or are they able to fly around awhile before it kills them?
If they are able to fly around then would poisoned pigeons or any other poisoned birds harm the falcons if one of them happened to be a meal?
Just wondering because of those black birds that were possibly poisoned by poison left out for the pigeons.
In case folks were on holidays, this is what Moonstar is referring to:
Dead birds fall 'like raindrops' in Winnipeg's North End To answer your question Moonstar, it would depend on the poison and how much ingested that would influence whether the birds could fly around. But yes, they can fly after poisoning but whether they will and how far depends on the bird, poison, location, etc.
If it was poisoning, what type of poison was used is nearly impossible to say without the necropsy results. There are pigeon control products that don't kill the pigeons but do make them sick and they then move along. Most folks who understand anything about pigeon control know that poisoning doesn't work, you need to exclude them from their roosting locations and exclusion techniques are primarily non-toxic and non-lethal. Folks who don't know about pigeon control might do something like use rat poison or some such but pigeons aren't stupid and they won't eat it but other species might. And sometimes folks get creative and use products that are for other purposes but they use it because it is on hand.
Having said that, there have been intentional poisoning of pest bird species such as this one in South Dakota a couple of years ago
Now grackles are omnivores - they eat pretty much anything: crops, bugs, eggs/chicks, garbage, you name it, that's why they are so successful. (
All About Birds - Common Grackle) And they are gregarious so they could have all been affected at the same source and that is a lot of ground to cover. So it could have been intentional, unintentional or accidental - once they have performed toxicological testing, they should have a better idea of what it could have been.
I know that pest control firms in Winnipeg avoid using poisons wherever possible so they don't have indirect/incidental deaths. And they know about the peregrines. There used to be poison on rooftops all the time when the project first began and so far as I can recall, we have never had an incidental death on record. We have had poisoning but it was accidental - for example when a chick ingested some oil.
Hope this answered your question ...
