Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Somebody in California's actually got a brain, it seems

Contra Costa cozies up to raptors
Contra Costa County is hoping hawks and falcons enjoy hunting from 20 new raptor perches installed in Concord and Walnut Creek open space areas.
...
The department received a little more than $4,000 from the county Fish and Wildlife Committee to buy the perches from the Wild Wing Company in Cotati. Wild Wing makes a line of elevated nests and perches that make it easier for hawks, falcons, owls and other predatory birds to hunt in places overpopulated with ground squirrels, gophers and other rodent pests, said company owner John Schuster.

Encourage the hawks to eat the skwerls... sounds like a brilliant ideer to me. Plus, the hawks don't disturb the rest of the ecosystem or bother most family pets (unless folks allow their guinea pigs to do the free-range thing in the backyard). I suppose teacup Chihuahuas might be in danger, but I'm thinking they're pretty vulnerable even without the added raptor issue and probably shouldn't be turned out into a backyard unsupervised anyway.

Anything to decrease the skwerl population is a plus in my book.

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