One thing we've been doing around the old homestead is planting the garden, and trying to attract purple martins to our martin house. Hubby has a CD with purple martin sounds and he plays it morning and night. The martins have made a few fly-bys but none have landed as far as I know.
If you have a martin house, you know that there is a constant battle to keep starlings and sparrows from a) roosting in the house, and b) pulling baby martins out of the house. Since we have no nesting martins, our focus is on keeping the sparrows out so the martins will have a place to go. To that end, we have a wire cage trap set up not far from the martin house. It is beside one of the fence posts on our veggie garden, and the fence is chicken wire. The top of the three foot fence has no support as I thought the floppy nature of the wire would prevent the cat or squirrels from climbing into the garden.
The other day I noticed the trap door was down and I could see a bird inside, so I went out to investigate. Of course the cat tagged along, and as soon as he saw the bird fluttering in the trap, he ran to the fence, and instantly climbed to the top. By the time I got there, he was clinging to the top of the fence which was swaying wildly back and forth beneath his weight. His eyes were still glued to the bird in the trap, but when he tried to put a paw toward the trap, the fence jerked the other direction and he had to wrap his foot around the chicken wire instead, until he couldn't climb up, down, or even let go. He was meowing pitifully when I grabbed him around the middle and pried him off the fence, then dropped him to the ground before he could bite me.
With him safely down, I pulled down the trap and let the bird go. It was a female cardinal and glad to get out of there. After I let it go, the cat paced back and forth in front of the trap, meowing pitifully like a kid who just broke his new toy.
There was another cardinal in the trap today, and I took the video camera along with me in case the cat tried to climb the fence again. He didn't. I guess he's smarter than I give him credit. Too bad, it really was funny.
