HOME DEPOT-an unplanned zoo

Forums: Animal Behavior
Email this Topic • Print this Page

I went to the Home Depot last evening and was inspecting the new gardening stuff . I was looking at the shelves with the bird feeds and suet cakes and suddenly I was accosted by some really loud "cheep cheep cheeping". It appeared that some sparrows and purple finches had been standing near the shelves and were calling out to people.
I put a bag or two of oil seeds in my cart and , because my knife slipped, I made a small tear in a bag of mixed "songfood" and some of it accidently spilled onto the ground.
A guy saw my slip and came over and smiled at how everybody seems to feed the "house birds" that exist (pretty much unknown to most of the customers).
A typical HD is about 3 acres in size and has all sorts of nooks and crannies.
SO, I began walking around and I was really imopressed at how many vbirdies actually live inside this place . I remember once commenting to y wife about some bird poop on the aisle floor. (Thats why the store has a large mop cart on a motorized cart and some kid is always toodling around on permnanent mop duty.

I asked a clerk about how they deal with these birds and she told me that they are really fascinating as how theyve acclimated themselves to living in a Big Box store and how theyve adjusted their behaviors to fit with our stuff.
The clerk told me that, in the summer especially, they keep some ponds of water out in the external garden area and the birds have learned how to come down and flit all around the sensors on the doors and then the doors open and they fly out to their water baths. When theyve had enogh, they come flying in to the AC and live in the big world of the store. Apparently theres plenty of food for them just from lunches, seeds, spilled bird food etc.

Anybody have any other eperiences of how animals have accomodated themselves to living with humans?

Topic Stats
Top Replies
Link to this Topic

Type: Discussion • Score: 12 • Views: 2,715 • Replies: 36

No top replies

@farmerman,

We seem to have recently developed a whole passel of cafe sparrows.

They fly in to ones with permanently open doors, and flit about looking for scraps of food or frank handouts.

Probably very unhygienic, but fascinating to watch them.

0 Replies

@farmerman,

We've got the same thing up her in New Hampshire. Mostly Sparrows from what I can tell. They mostly hang around near the bird seed area and travel in/out through the garden center entrances.

I haven't seen these particular birds tripping the sensors on the doors, but I've seen video of other birds doing that. Very adaptive little creatures Smile

0 Replies

Had a hilarious experience at the San Francisco zoo while visiting there with Sglass. There's an outdoor cafe where you can get some fast-food and a drink and eat it at a picnic table. In addition to the ubiquitous pigeons and sparrows and suchlike, we noticed some seagulls strutting around. The birds pick up the droppings of picnickers and probably scavenge feed that's intended for some of the zoo's residents in places that only a bird can get into illegally.

At a table not far from the one Sglass and I were sitting at, a woman and two children (ages probably around 6 to 8 yrs.) plopped down their trays of sandwiches. They sat down and then the woman got up to go back to the vendor's kiosk, apparently to get some condiments. The moment she was gone, a seagull swept out of the sky, snatched the entire meal off the table and flew off. The kids were terrified. The gull would probably never have had the nerve to do that if the adult had not been absent.

0 Replies

In winter, the gulls from Lake Erie fly south to Columbus and Cincinnati to live off the spilled food around junk food restaurants (and people also put out day-old doughnuts and other such food which would otherwise hit the dumpster). Apparently, they prefer the fish in the lake, and the forage around the shores, but have adapted to the frozen winter condition of the lake in this manner. It would be a few hours flying time from the lake shore to Columbus, a few hours more for Cincinnati. I guess before the white man came, they were obliged to fly to the Chesapeake . . . or starve.

1 Reply

We used to get startled by a chipmunk in the pet food/bird seed aisle of the local Canadian Tire.

There were birds in a grocery store in a city where we once lived. I had a problem with that, actually, as they had an in-store bakery. I wouldn't buy their bakery products. The birds would perch on the signs hanging from the ceiling in each aisle and they were covered in droppings. We're not talking a flock here, just two or three but they made quite a mess. I stopped shopping there when I realized this wasn't an isolated incident. But as you say, with automatic doors how are you going to keep the critters out?

0 Replies

@Setanta,

Speaking of Chesapeake , the seasonal gulls are always another fascinating animal watch along parking lots of shopping centers.. The seabirds have these parking lots as part of their flyways now. Its possible to see various species of gulls, turnstones, plovers, peterls etc at different times of year as they fly to their grounds. Gulls, on the other hand, have habituated themselves to any hard surface near buildings or any landfill. We call em "dump chickens" they are so numerous.

At this time of year the snow geese , whove readjusted their flyways over the last 2 decades. What uised to be a special late February treat in years past, was the spotting of an occasional snow goose in among the canadian geese. Now, theres a separate "time of year" for their flights, both heading north and south. In the fall, they head south fairly early (Septemebr) and then head north in the late Feb/ early MArch timeframe. Its possible to see them in the tens of thousands stripping early planted fields. SOme of the farmers have taken to using either dogs or carbide cannons to chase the snowys. The PA DNR has opened a special 2X snow goose season with no limit to the number of birds one can kill. The only problem is that since snow geese have a really funky flavor, hardly anyone except the "kill for pleasure" hunters even bother, so they just and multiply logarithmically.

0 Replies

When I first came to work in Tomball, one of the great pleasures was to observe the thousands of birds filling the sky, as the seasons changed. Every day for a short time they sailed past, or came down to strip the red berries or to sit in the trees for a spell, before continuing their journey. Now, not so much.

The HEB grocery had birds in the ceiling for several years, but they must have cleared them out, as I haven't seen or heard one in a few years.

Sometimes the robins appear, as they did last week. They might come in great flocks, but other times, the number is sparce. I love to watch as they spread out across the lawn, hip hopping and only moving over a little as I pass. They are a bit too laid back for their own good. I saw a cat reach up and grab one on the wing.

We have a hawk that spends a great deal of time at the willow tree growing in the retention pond. It rarely is startled enough to leave when I come around the building corner. That is one beautiful bird.

1 Reply

@edgarblythe,

Hawks have become parts of our society without any problems. One of our bypasses goes for the MAryland line to Philadelphia, Its Rt 1 N and its in a rural/suburban area. The various hawk species take up feeding positions evenly spaced along the trees along the right-of-way.These hawks, several species including the big Red-Tailed, just sit and wait and watch. Indifferent to rush hour traffic, they will stoop down and catch some tiny critter such as rabbits or mice that stop along the clearaings that margin the highway. This opening strip that separates the highway from the forested area behind, is a "death slot" for small critters. The hawks (and at night, the owls) use them as a smorgasbord.

0 Replies

Our bird population includes a sizeable group of buzzards. As the city grows to include their territory, they adapt very well. There is plenty of road kill for all, it seems. I have watched them strip a full grown deer in a day's time. At the apartments they come right down to the parking lot to get run over squirrels and whatever grabs their fancy. Funny thing, a dog got ran over just outside my neighborhood. The dog's owner did not have the decency to pick it up and bury it. But, the buzzards for some reason would not eat it. I have been wondering why for the last couple of months.

1 Reply

@farmerman,

My experiences as to how animals have accommodated themselves to living with humans is that my wife lets me eat at the kitchen table..........

As far as real world adaptations - not very successful at all - all the amphibians and fish in British Columbia's Lower Mainland have been pretty much wiped out by indifferent expansionism and pollution.

Silverfish, rats, pigeons and cockroaches are doing well however.

2 Replies

1 Reply

Several of the grocery stores in Columbus, especially those in place where the gulls congregate in winter, had hawk silhouettes pained on the windows, and have "screechers," electronic horns which emit a sound like the hunting cry of hawks, to keep the birds away. The problem began there with birds nesting in the large metal letters which formed the name of the store on the front of the building, and lead to birds coming into the stores. The hawk silhouettes and the "screechers" were, last i knew of it, very effective.

1 Reply

@DrewDad,

The ABerdeen seagull wont get far, theyve got his picture from the security camera.

1 Reply

@farmerman,

It's like the start of a bad joke. "So, this bird walks into a convenience store...."

0 Replies

@Setanta,

They have these huge EYES in the Lowes Store near Newark Delaware. They were said to have been installed to spook the seagulls also. We are actually no more than 45 miles from the Delaware Bay and only about 25 from the Chesapeake so weve got anything from huge flocks of cattle egrets to gulls, geese , and lots of eagles (whove all headed N for the season ) .

The eagles are an interesting adapttation. Ever since theyve been protected and reintroduced (along with DDT banning) theyve gone from only 2 pairs in the entire state of PA to now, an estimated breeding density of over 500 pairs and a winter time migration bunch near the Conowingo Reservoir of over 400 eagles just within a 5 mile radius. Eagles are so common in the winters now that people dont even stop and look. (You can always tell tourists that are here just for the Christmas "Eagle peek". The eagles have discovered that the Conowingo Pond traps and keeps the Anadromous fish from moving upstreamm and the trash fish like carp just gang up. The eagles eat thousands and get really plump over the brief November through mid JAnuary stopover.

0 Replies

@Chumly,

Youve gotta watch more closely chum. The social adaptations are all around. We have bears around us now and they love garbage. Deer are a real problem in suburbia because they realize that hunting is verboten in suburbia. SO deer by the hundreds and , in some cases, thousands just wander unmolested around backyards.
In our farm, we have our pastures broken up into 15 acre "lots" where we graze the sheep and keep the pastures rotated in the growing season. (This prevents strongid infestations in hoofed animals). We have 52" high fences of woven wire topped with "HOT" barbed wire. (This keeps coyotes away because theyve learned to climb fences ).

The deer just walk up to the fence and, without a runny, they just leap strait up and clear the fence and they graze with the sheep.

0 Replies

@edgarblythe,

Out in W Maryland at Lake Ligonier, the buzzards have adapted to a suburban life which causes the "summer home dwellers" real problems. In the winter, when the houses are usually closed up, the buzzards roost on cedar shake rooks and use their clawas to dig into the cedar shakes. Also, the buzzard crop is highly acidic and the birds only line of defense is to puke this vile bile onto anyone who thretens them. Their puke is really foul and is highly caustic also. SO, if they puke up some al dente rabbit, onto the cedar shake roof, the shingle that they epxpectorated onto can be eaten away in a few months and the roof can be seen to leak just in time for spring ice storms and rains.

Animals pick up on our practices really quickly.

1 Reply

@Chumly,

some fishes, like certain species of chiclids and eels and some garfish (among others) have learned to take totally different stream paths to get to adjacent waters. Im not talking about evolving new species like chiclids in the Rift valley lakes of Africa or the landlocked streams of the AMazon

1 Reply

@farmerman,

They outlawed as dangerous cedar shake roofs around here. Houses with cedar burn as if somebody dumped kerosene on them.

1 Reply

HOME DEPOT-an unplanned zoo

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know