Larsen traps are normally placed near a pheasant pen, or at the edge of a woodland where the pheasant pen is nearby. You could also find them in the corner of a grain field. The Larsen trap was invented by a gamekeeper to trap crows, magpies, etc. They are mainly used in spring and early summer, when birds have their young. They fail to realise that dense cover ivy, thorny bushes, etc.
Skip to content The Larsen trap is a cage bird trap made of wire and either a wooden for metal framed cage where one live bird decoy bird, or call bird , usually a crow or magpie, is placed to encourage another bird, not always of similar species, to come down to it.
Larsen Trap Cruelty Water, food, a perch and shelter are required by law for birds in Larsen traps, but are often missing. We have witnessed crows left to die without food and water. This video says it all: Terror for the captive birds! If you suspect that a trap has been set illegally to catch birds of prey, please report this to your local WCO.
Gun laws prevent shooting of magpies close to public roads and houses. We are not opposed to legal, site-specific control of magpies, nor to the legal use of Larsen or other cage traps, as long as the general licence conditions are strictly adhered to. We do oppose illegal magpie control, including poisoning, which has a high risk of accidentally poisoning other birds, including rare birds of prey.
Many people wish to control magpies in gardens because they take eggs and chicks of other birds. Since research indicates that magpies do not pose a conservation problem to garden birds, the use of general licence in this context is at best debatable. It must be remembered that if challenged, anyone killing magpies in their garden may have to prove to a court of law that they had acted lawfully. This may be difficult given the lack of scientific evidence that magpies affect the conservation of garden bird species.
Use our online form to report wildlife crimes that you have witnessed or heard about from someone else. The more information you can provide, the more useful your report will be. Martin Harper Blog. I don't see calls to cull sparrowhawks. The magpie's an unfairly maligned bird, imo, and one that has its place in nature - any interference by us won't make any difference.
It happens to be a confident, visible and visually striking bird and I think the myths that have grown up around it don't help its public profile! When trapping, the decoy magpies are usually killed each time a new one is trapped so the decoy is never in the cage for more than a day or so, possibly considerably less.
However, in that time it should have food, water, shade I am pretty sure they are still used in the New Forest. Recent Discussions. Magpie caged as bait? Just got back from a weekend in Brittany.
Kitchen Door Replacement. Hope this explains things alittle better for you Like. What View I've heard of it in the UK and seen it used there. Ted Coincidentally there was a piece on the Countryfile program on BBC1 this evening about Larson traps being used to catch Magpies as part of a research study to test whether the Magpies are a factor in the declining population of several species of birds. Milk maid I am pretty sure they are still used in the New Forest.
Your Name. Your Email. Your Message. The details you provide on this page will not be used to send any unsolicited e-mail, and will not be sold to a third party. Privacy Policy. Send Message. If you are just getting to know the area, look out for nest-building activity from the beginning of March. Before bud-burst, magpie nests are very obvious in the trees. Crows and, to a lesser extent, magpies, often sit high in the trees near the centre of their territory, literally acting sentinel.
You should aim to position the trap in plain view of sentinels, and in a prominent location within yards of the nest site. Avoid placing traps too close to rookeries, unless you want a full-time job dispatching or releasing rooks, in which case a multi-catch trap is a better option — please see our fact sheet on multi-catch traps England or Scotland for more information. We suggest that crows and magpies are your main target in the conservation of wild-breeding gamebirds and other vulnerable wildlife species.
Place the trap on the ground, especially for crows, which like to approach on the floor. However, when trapping magpies among bushes, or in a dense hedge, raising the trap above brambles gives it a better chance of being seen. Do not be afraid to experiment with setting traps in cover. A good call-bird will often reply to the calls of the territory holder even though the trap is out of sight. Indeed, this ploy can account for trap-shy individuals, there is also the benefit of the trap not being easily seen by people.
Where local situations allow, for example, areas with low public access, placing the trap so the call-bird appears dominant, such as in direct sunlight if conditions are not too hot, rather than in the shade, may improve trapping success.
If you have not caught anything within two days it could be either because the birds are not yet fully territorial or, the trap is not close enough to the heart of the territory or, as can be the case with crows, the call bird is a young bird which possess little threat to the pair.
In some cases, it may be best to move the trap and use it elsewhere. If you know that there are dominant birds which will not go in, rest the site for a few days and then bring back the trap with a new decoy. It is not strictly necessary to catch both birds of a pair. They defend their territory together, and to remove one will prevent the remaining bird defending the area against a speculating pair of intruders; in this way its breeding effort is disrupted.
Furthermore, the male bird feeds the female while she is incubating the eggs — if he does not turn up, the hen bird must leave the nest. If you keep up your use of Larsen traps throughout spring and summer, the establishment of territories will be continually disrupted and, while present, fresh birds will be pre-occupied with territorial defence and nest building. Their demand for food is never swollen by the need to feed young, and they have little time to watch the movements of incubating game and songbirds.
In a well-run trapping programme, you will have caught each original pair before they have young, and then gone on to remove new ones before they are fully established. Crows and magpies learn very quickly, and a bird that witnesses its partner being removed from a trap by a human and killed may subsequently be very shy of traps. If you catch a bird in one compartment of a Larsen trap, leave it disputing its case through the wire with the call-bird. Its partner will very often join in and get caught in the other compartment.
This is one advantage of the three-compartment Larsen trap. However, if you have not caught the other bird by nightfall, you probably never will, so take out the first capture.
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