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Thanks, Stebet! I can’t imagine there is an easy fix to prevent escape artists from getting out. I am still amazed that it happened at all. I’ve been watching the trap more closely, and notice that some sparrows spend more time near the entry flap than others. A small spring that helps to hold the flap shut might do the trick, but the spring would have to be flexible enough to allow caught sparrows to enter. Sparrow are so adaptable, and obviously smarter than I thought they were.
I have used the DRST for several years now with great success. Over 200 sparrows have been removed, and the results were immediate. For the first time in several years, the blue-green swallows are able to successfully raise young in our nest boxes.
Every spring, I set up the DRST to capture the active adult sparrows.
Yesterday, for the first time ever, I had a female sparrow get out of the trap!
She was the first sparrow I caught this season, and alone in the trap. She was working hard to raise the wire cover over the entry hole where the sparrows enter the trap from the up/down mechanism. She would grab it with her beak and raise it repeatedly, even as I was right there watching her. I left her alone and came back later to find her gone.
The trap is solid and the back door was secured: there were no other possible ways out. So somehow she got the wire flap lifted up, and got into the area with the up/down mechanism. From there, she must have crawled up and pushed the mechanism down to escape. The maintenance wire flap over the mechanism area was secured with the original wire, so she didn’t get out that way.
I know this must be a rare event, but now I wonder how the trap could be modified so that smart sparrows cannot lift that wire flap over the entry hole?
