Discouraging hawks?

[Mr. 16 gauge]

On some of the buildings in town, the property owners put toy rubber snakes on the roof and the birds tend to stay away.

If I'm not mistaken, don't hawks EAT snakes? I might just be putting out a dinner invitation if I do that.

I've thought about putting out my owl decoy that I use for crow hunting, but I'm concerned that the pigeons might think it's real and not return!

I think what I will try is putting up a simple scare crow in the garden.....I'll try and move it around every few days, and hopefully it will keep the hawks away from my pigeons and the squirrels away from the sweet corn.

.....and while I am all for bringing back species from the edge of extinction, and reintroducing them into areas that they once inhabited, I think it is quite short sighted for the naturalist and goverment agencies that do so to not have a plan in place to deal with said critters when they rebound (and sometimes with a vengence) and cause problems. In addition the the raptors & wolves, don't forget the American alligator, which now takes a fair toll on people's pets, and have attacked humans as well......

[skeet]

[QUOTE=Mr. 16 gauge;340001]If I'm not mistaken, don't hawks EAT snakes? I might just be putting out a dinner invitation if I do that.

Hawks eak snakes for certain. I have seen many snakes taken by them. In particular one caught a very large black snake near my barn...a kinda pet snake I think. Most amazing thing about 'em is when they kill 'em they seem to not wriggle around very much like snakes do when humans kill 'em.. Don't know why. Heck I even saw a Kestrel catch and eat a garter snake. They are tiny falcons. I raised one of them one time..Fell off a grain elevator at our Skeet club. He didn't have 50 feathers on him when I found him. That bird would try to scare the heck outta people who came in the house. Also it was definitely not a vegan...He liked STEAK..chicken necks and hamburger. We kept him for more than a year. He would sit on our shoulders in the evening. Watch TV We got that darn bird in a local bird program and he learned to live in the wild. but every now and then he'd hit us up for some easy meals