Wildlife: Black Rat Snake Ate My Baby Bluebirds!!! Sob!, 1 by gooberpie

gooberpie wrote:
I am so disgusted right now! TWO YEARS IN A ROW black rat snakes have eaten either the eggs in my blue bird box or the baby blue birds! I didn't realize what was doing it till just a couple of days ago, when TWO black rat snakes in a row got caught in the straw mat I put down so as to grow grass over some bare spots on my lawn. They slithered into the netting, got their scales caught and got cooked very quickly in the hot sun. Here are some photos of one of the snakes. I should have taken photos while they were still caught in the netting. I don't feel great that the snakes got caught in the net and were cooked. Not a nice way to die. I am keeping an eye on the netting now to see that more snakes don't get caught, or birds, which can also get caught. May have to tack the net down more.

But it does anger and disgust me that 10 baby blue birds or their eggs were destroyed over the last two years by these snakes! I am figuring it was snakes because this year I had a raccoon protector on the nest box, and because there was NOTHING in the nest box at all except the nest after the blue birds disappeared---no shells, no blood, nothing.

But now I know a way to protect the blue birds next year from the snakes---Wrap some netting around the pole on which the blue bird box is located.

I am SOOOO disgusted right now! I LOVE blue birds, and want to do all I can to increase their numbers!