We let the hounds out for their twilight bark on Sunday evening and the both of them started harrying something that was fluttering back and forth trying to escape. I captured the hounds and held them back while DesertRoomie collected it.
Turned out it was a rock dove which are common around here, almost as common as pigeons. It had a bad laceration down one side of its neck and a broken wing on the same side. We looked at each other for a long moment then DR knelt to hold it down on a block. Its head was moving about too much to trust a hatchet and besides, her hands were right there, so I fetched a pair of shears, apologized, and nipped it head off as quick as I could. I’ve been bummed out since then.
It probably would have been dead from sepsis or shock by morning anyway, after suffering all night, so intellectually I know it was the right thing to do, but being a steward really sucks sometimes.
Having used that method when collecting scientific specimens, I strongly disagree. As the link says:
Bolding mine.
If you do it wrong, the bird won’t be killed immediately and will continue to suffer. If putting a bird out of its misery, I would definitely go for the decapitation method, using whatever means is convenient. I speak from extensive experience.
Fair enough. You’ve certainly done it more then I have. I’ve always been taught to wring the necks of any birds we shot that didn’t immediately die. It has seemed quick and painless.
With practice, it can be done quickly. That method might be preferred for game birds to avoid them bleeding all over the place. (Although they would be bleeding from the shot wounds, I would think this would be less). And it’s not really “wringing” the neck, which implies twisting. Rather it’s a quick stretching to dislocate the spinal cord.
We use other methods for collecting birds for scientific specimens because of the need to keep the skin and bones intact. Neck-dislocation is used, although chest compression is most common for small birds. (Regardless of the method, I hate killing birds.)
However, I wouldn’t recommend neck dislocation for someone who is trying to do it for the first time, especially if they may be squeamish about it. If you hesitate and don’t do it rapidly and quickly, the bird will suffer.
If you don’t care about blood, and have a sharp tool available, I would use decapitation in the field.
I had a similar experience, out hiking on my own and with no knife or anything else to hand - a badly mauled bird with an irreparably torn wing that had escaped from some predator. Without any expertise or experience with dislocation or anything like that, the quickest method and most reliable method I could devise was to put a flat rock underneath its head while holding it firmly, line up another substantial rock above and just push down hard with the weight of the upper rock assisting. This seemed better than trying to “strike” it in some way, and trying to decapitate without a sharp knife did not seem like it would be reliably quick enough. The aftermath was obviously unpleasant to look at, but for the bird it was over in an instant, it didn’t take much force to completely crush the skull.
I was going to ask what the OP meant by a “rock dove” instead of pigeon. I was wondering if they might be local names for different species. But yes, the Rock Dove, Rock Pigeon, and Feral Pigeon are all names for the species Columba livia. By “pigeon” he could have been referring to a Band-tailed Pigeon, which is common in some places in the west (and could be more common than Rock Doves outside of cities).
To say nothing of stomach. After getting set, I looked away so I wouldn’t see its little head drop.
Plus I was at home. A hunter in the field isn’t going to carry a pair of shears around, “just in case.”
You are correct, sir. My error stems from a couple years ago when I was out with a birder and heard this harsh cry I’d heard a number of times. “What is that?” I asked the birder.
“Oh, that’s a rock dove,” he said pointing. I dunno now what he was pointing at but what I thought he was pointing at was a mourning dove.
“Huh,” I thought, “I thought that was a mourning dive,” but deferred to authority. Since then I’ve been under the misapprehension mourning doves were rock doves – the victim was a mourning dove – and rock dives were just pigeons.
I found a page, Pigeons, Doves, Parrots, and Cuckoos of Maricopa County, and gone through every one, listing to their cries and none sound like the birder’s “rock dove” so the call is now stashed back in the “to be identified” list.
Side note: On the bottom of the page is an introduced specie, Rosy-faced Lovebird (Agapornis roseicollis). We had spotted them years ago and were going nuts trying to identify them. I got out the Patterson’s and the only green parrotoid was the Thick-billed Parrot (Rhynchopsitta pachyrhyncha) but the red was all wrong, they were found in southern Arizona, and last seen in 1938. Then one day we were in PetSmart and paid attention to their aviary – Aha!
We call them divorce birds because their call sound like they’re constantly quarreling. Just last night I saw a news story about trying to reintroduce them (again) to Arizona.
My BiL, and the folks he hunted doves with, all carried shears in the field. They’d use the shears to remove the bird’s breast meat and drop it in a plastic bag. Leave the rest for scavengers.