https://youtu.be/gaxgBY9EIfg

Those guys are shooting tweety birds...Geo

George I'm trying to figure out why my rely was deleted.

After watching the video here's what I said.

"The one guy said they taste like chicken"

Any ideas George ?

Look like Song Thrushes to me. No wonder our migratory song birds are in decline! The European Union delight in telling we in the U.K. can and cannot shoot but don't enforce it on their own nationals. And they wonder why we in the U.K. want out independence! Stop the beggars taking all our sea fish as well! Lagopus.....

After everything else is dead, you are only left with migratory song birds.
Served pickled whole from a jar.

Four and twenty...baked in a pie.

I understand this is a great sport in Italy. I believe they delite in eating them as well.

NO...Geo

Below is from a Beretta 412 single-shot advertisement 1950s-60s. Note the songbird call cages.  Bottom photo shows French "miroir aux alouettes" (lark mirrors) used to shoot larks.  The devices are staked into the ground and a cord is wrapped around the base which rotates when the two cord ends are alternately pulled.  Perhaps the greatest destruction of European songbirds occurs in Cyprus and other locations where tree and brush branches are coated with a sticky substance which traps the feet of the birds which are migrating.

The lark mirrors remind me of RoboDucks. You once posted a link to a great magazine article regarding the mediterranean songbird harvest. We don't do that stuff, we just put up wind turbines on the Gulf to kill our surplus songbirds...Geo

Thank you George;

I could rephrase that to say: We don't do that stuff, we just put up wind turbines on the Gulf as well as Monsanto and their competitors to kill our bird population.

Geo, here's the article about lime-sticking in the Mediterranean.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/07/26/emptying-the-skies

And the Frenchies eat steamed ortolans- whether having them in captivity is legal or not--Bon Appetit! Le Reynard..

coo...coo...

I can answer this question jOe...

There are some people that you don't like here. But you DON'T cry to Dave to demand censorship.

On the other hand, there are some people here that also just don't like you. Some engage and spar with you directly, and that's all. Some others feel the pathetic need to cry to Dave to anonymously demand censorship. Some of them even feel the need to engage in internet doxxing because you choose to use a screen name. But they hide their cries for censorship behind their PM's to Dave, because they don't want everyone to know that they have less stones than school-girls. Yet they think they are better than you, and they think they have more integrity than you.

At least that is what they tell each other, and have themselves convinced is true.

Great article Gil, thanks!

Cyprus and Malta are islands that the birds rest in on the return from Africa. I would think they are pretty well tired out and need a short stop. Hardly sport. They get caught on the crossing from Morocco to Gibraltar too. Our swallow numbers were well down this year as they were being netted on their return. A lot of it is illegal but not properly enforced. It would be a bit like an unregulated Canada shooting all the ducks and geese that they can as they try to migrate south. After a few years there would be none left coming down into the U.S. Cyprus and Malta are in the European Union and break the law with impunity; whereas we in Britain abide by it. Lagopus…..

Or even better- "Coo-coo'achoo, Mrs. Robinson- catchin' a ride on the Chattanooga _Choo-Choo--..

Aren't mist nets used also?

I cannot feel overly superior to the mediterraneans eating the songbirds. Back when I was BB gun age I was the terror of the local songbird population.

My buddies and I set up a blind behind our chicken pen and shot all comers. My Great Aunt Carrie was also implicated because she would clean and bake (I think) the birdies for us. They were wonderful!

With a nod to my friend hoJo's earlier post, my recollection is that they tasted just like baked chicken...Geo

I was hoping the video would demonstrate how to fix the birds. They look like Meadow Larks.

Folks in the rural areas of the South during hard times would eat robins. I've heard stories of "rattling" hedges at night with Calcutta cane poles and picking up and dispatching the stunned songbirds that were roosting. Gil

Robins should have been easy pickings when they're drunk on chinaberries, in the fall.

SRH

Stan, when I was in grammar school, the playground was edged by pyrachanta bushes. When the red berries ripened, waves of cedar waxwings would flock to the bushes and get drunk on the fermenting berries. They could be easily picked up by hand. Gil

I see a lot of cedar waxwings, robins, and starlings freeing on fall and winter berries. I haven't seen any that I can say for sure are intoxicated. Certainly, never any I could pick up.

What keeps the alcohol from evaporating before the bird eats it?

Macon, GA is full of planted Sugarberry trees. One year a tremendous flock of migrating Evening Grosbeaks arrived just as the berries were falling from the trees. I remember one whole day I spent gently picking up the drunk birds from busy streets and putting them back in people's yards to sleep it off...Geo

Brent, on any given tree the berries are in different stages of fermentation as long as there's sugar left in the berry. Fermentation takes place not just on the surface but throughout the berry. It doesn't take much for a robin to get snockered.
In reading James Lee Burke's Robicheaux series set in Cajun country Louisiana, there's often mentioned a pot of robin gumbo in small knife and gun clubs (bars) for patrons' consumption.
Gil

Back in the sixties when there was a big migration of Greek people into this country, my Dad caught these Greek hunters out in the young wheat crop.

They had not sought permission to hunt on Dads farm, but worse than that was they were walking the crop down.
Now Dad was particular about any bugger walking the crop down, whether it was me, some Emu Kangaroo or Goat or some Greek hunters & that was the main reason for stopping them.

So while he had them there he asked them what they were hunting.
One replied "We shoot him the Ha Ha pigeon."
Dad had never before heard of a Ha Ha pigeon so asked what that was. The Greek hunter then produced a Kookaburra from his game bag, held it up and repeated Ha Ha pigeon a few more times.

Needless to say, they then got the short shrift & told not to return.

The Kookaburra is known also as the laughing Kookaburra because of their call. Google it if you don't know of this Australian bird. They are definitely not common table fare here & are also protected by law.

O.M