[Gpdd] MISC - nesting material

Andrew a1.mills at portset.net
Sun Aug 19 13:11:14 EDT 2007


Reading about the jackdaws taking hair from guinea pigs reminded me of another programme that was on last year.  It was about a wildlife filmer, Johnny Kingdom, who lived on Exmoor.  He had a 3 legged deer called Bambi who he had rescued as a baby and kept as a pet.  At the time the programme was filmed Bambi was getting old and stiff and was not able to move as fast and was having the same problem with jackdaws pulling her coat out.  At one point it got so bad that they wondered whether they would be able to keep her as they felt it was so unfair the way the jackdaws were pestering her all the time.  Eventually though the jackdaws finished nesting and left her alone and her coat grew back again.  You wouldn't imagine jackdaws being such a problem with guinea pigs though, they move fast and being so much smaller you wouldn't think the birds would have time to pull out the hair.  I know several years we had a similar problem with our tortoise.  She was getting strange marks a!
 round her head and we didn't know what was causing it.  Then one day we saw a magpie down picking at her and realised that's what was causing it.  The bigger birds can really be a nuisance.  We get a lot of jackdaws and magpies around here and they're a real pain.  We much prefer to see the smaller birds around.  When our animals go out now we always put them in an enclosed run so nothing can get at them.  We've got dogs and a cat as well so it wouldn't be a good idea to let them run free where any of them could get chased.  One of the dogs even tried to pick up the tortoise once so I wouldn't like them to get near any of the small furries.  I've just had a funny thought.  Perhaps I could take the hair from the longer haired guinea pigs and make a sort of scarecrow out of it - that would be a good way to get rid of those birds!




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