The link I included says you can only intervene with wildlife that is posing a threat to you or your property.

"Massachusetts General Law, Chapter 131, Section 37, gives property owners the right to use lawful means to destroy wildlife in the act of causing damage or threatening personal safety. The public may only address wildlife actually causing damage or posing immediate threats and may not randomly destroy wildlife as a preventive measure. It is illegal for a property owner to live-trap a problem animal and move it for release to public or private property".

Here is a link that might be useful: mass wildlife problems

We have donated our dispatched HOSPs to a local zoo. Just another option for you to consider. We dispatch them then place them in little individual ziplock baggies and pop them in the freezer. When we have enough, we take a freezer chest full up to the zoo. We use air guns to dispatch them. We use bb's that aren't lead, specifically copper. We use the same bb's to dispatch Norway rats. If you're going to be donating dispatched HOSPs anywhere that they will be fed to a higher order predator, please do not use lead bb's to dispatch them.

FYI- our local wildlife rehabbers and the zoo will not accept live HOSPs, EUSTs, or Norway rats. Live prey can injure their recuperating snakes and raptors plus they have a tendency of flying away which simply exacerbates an existing problem by introducing them to yet another area. We have to dispatch them first and package them properly before they will accept them. Perhaps if you are having issues dispatching them you could contact www.sialis.org and see if there is anyone in your area who would help you.

Should mention that HOSPs, like EUSTs, enjoy no protection what so ever from the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. This doesn't mean that your local government may not have laws disallowing discharge of a firearm, in fact our local government does however air guns are exempt. I'd also like to mention that for my State, HOSPs are not classified as wildlife. Makes sense, they're not wildlife, they're an invasive species just like fireants, the Cane Toad, and the Norway Rat. For me, this means we are free to humanely do with them as we so desire with no need for special permitting. I'm sorry Massachusetts appears to be behind the times by lumping these birds in with actual North American wildlife in that you need some sort of a permit to control, manage, and eradicate them however at least you won't need a permit from the US Dept of Ag to dispatch them according to the link provided by cynandjon.

In consideration of the many diseases HOSPs carry that are communicable to humans... wonder if this might be a loophole enabling at least some homeowners to lawfully destroy them? Some of the diseases they transmit pose an immediate threat to personal safety in my opinion. If this were true; there would be a lot less people out there practicing shoot, shovel, and shut up.

Which diseases do House sparrows carry that are a danger to humans?

One of my most very favorite people from the past just posted. Hello elly_nj! I've been gone a very long time but your insightful contributions expressing such sensitivity to the environment were never forgotten.

Which diseases...
Here's the very first site addressing the issues that popped up on a search-
http://floridaanimalcontrol.org/resource/englishsparrow.htm
Excerpt from the above site-
"The most common problem associated with house sparrows is bird mites invading the living space of the house during or after the nesting season. Bird mites--like northern fowl mite and tropical fowl mite--will bite humans and cause a small pustule, similar to a chigger bite. House sparrows are also important reservoirs and vectors of reintroduction of fowl mites into treated poultry houses. Sparrow nests can also be a source of stick-tight fleas, soft ticks, bed bugs, and dermestid (carpet) beetles.

House sparrows have been associated with numerous disease organisms transmissible to humans and livestock. These include the following: Nine bacterial diseases including salmonellosis (Salmonella food poisoning) and tuberculosis; the fungal disease Sarcosporidiosis; three protozoan diseases including Toxoplasmosis and Coccidiosis; Chlamydiosis; nine viral diseases including eastern equine, St. Louis, Venezuelan, and western equine encephalitis, Newcastle disease and fowl pox of poultry, and transmissible gastroenteritis of swine (hog cholera); three species of parasitic nematodes of poultry Tetramares (2 sp.) and Acuaria spiralis; and the parasitic fluke of poultry, Collyriculum faba. House sparrows are generally a more serious disease vector to livestock, especially poultry and egg producers, than to humans. However the presence of house sparrows in areas where food is prepared or people eat, such as picnic areas and outdoor restaurants, should be a cause for concern about the spread of Salmonella bacteria."

Pretty scary stuff considering what's quoted above is fact not fiction.

Really makes you wonder why parents allow their children to handle candy bars that have bird poops on them from those end racks at stores like Home Depot and such that allow English house sparrows to fly around. One of our local HD's actually has employees that feed the birds after the stores close and don't even get me going about what WalMarts allow. Things that make you go hmmmmmmmm. I really won't buy anything that has bird droppings on it from stores that allow these birds to breed. I can't help but question why they don't hire professional exterminators to come in and address their HOSP infestations just as they do cockroach and rat infestations.

Hi Laura!!! I did not recognize you!

I thought you meant that House sparrows carried specific diseases that only they (House sparrows) carry. Like how raptors and corvids are the main birds affected by West Nile.

Ironically, HOSP do not get nailed by West Nile! Our native birds do : ( And most of the things on the list you mention are carried by many other species. Unlike sparrows, though, those species do not nest under window air conditioners, so the mites tend to say in the nests. And most other species do not congregate at malls and restaurants. OK, gulls do. Grackles do.

Bird poop is generally not good stuff! Especially on picnic tables.

I did, in fact, use that amazing picture of mantids hatching in my wildlife programs for kids! Please take a moment to post it for others to enjoy! It is a wonderful shot!

So nice to see you again!!

That's my elly_nj! You are 100% correct. Neither HOSPs or EUSTs contract WNV but... they are vectors flying around spreading it to our native species so they can drop dead out of the skies like flies providing an even greater opportunity for the feathered rats of Shakespearean literature to get even more of a foothold in our environment. Isn't that special?

Regarding the zoonoses, it's the flocking habits of the EUSTs and the nesting habits of the HOSPs that pose the greatest threats to human health based on all that I've observed. When's the last time any of us ever saw thousands of robins sitting on power lines to the extent they were bowed 5' down to the ground? How about thousands of Carolina parakeets darkening the skies like EUSTs do? And when's the last time we ever saw blue birds nesting in the rafters of a big box store pooping all over the products for sale? What amazes me is that if a HOSP flies over head and poops in our potato salad while we're picnicking, we think nothing of scooping out the poop and dishing out more servings yet if a cockroach landed in the same potato salad, we'd waste the whole dish where just the reverse should be done based on all I now know about feathered rats.

Glad you were able to use a photo of mine. You're welcome to anything I have for community programming or personal use for that matter.

Hey Laura, thanks for helping stimulate my underused brain! You've provided lots of food for thought. (No pun intended!)

I did not realize that they were vectors of WNV. Makes sense. Maybe because they evolved closer to the source of WNV, they have evolved an immunity? The birds that got nailed never had to deal with the disease over thousands of generations, so they succumbed to the virus, like native Americans did to European diseases brought to the new world.

I don't eat under trees : )

To come back to the original post, I think many raptor centers may be leery of feeding local birds, albeit invasive pests that kill native birds, to their hawks. Rehabbers always worry about introducing disease/parasites to their birds when using wild prey. I know it sounds silly, because the raptors eat wild prey in the wild! But in rehab and captivity, animals are under stress, and more susceptible to these problems. Most wildlife carry parasite loads without dying from them, but stress compromises their immune systems and can contribute to their mortality.

In fact, when I found fresh road kill (squirrels and rabbits), I was leery about feeding them to our birds at TRT because I never know if the dead animals were contaminated by eating pesticides. Once, though, I found a just-dead rabbit, and fed it to Mariah, our Golden eagle. She really sqawked in a way I never heard her vocalize when she saw and jumped on that dead rabbit!

You have to consider a lot when caring for injured wildlife.

It would be neat if local accipiters (Cooper's and Sharp-shinned hawks) obliged us by taking care of large populations of invasives. But again, the hawks did not evolve with these little buggers, so there is no real natural control.

Thanks for saying nice things about me, too! My little cat just died, so anything positive in the day, like your words, mean alot.

Interesting analogy regarding the diseases brought to the new world. One big difference, we didn't know the damage the feathered rats were going to do to our environment when we released them in Central Park and we certainly didn't know they were vectors of WNV or I can assure you the people releasing them wouldn't have been allowed to do so. Unfortunately, we knew enough about the spread of disease when we traded blankets with the Native Americans and willfully and intentionally chose to trade blankets that had been used by people who had died of small pox and measles. Yup, it's sick but true.

You know, not many people realize that eagles will eat carrion just like an opossum or a vulture. I don't bring road kill to the rehabbers or to that little local zoo. Just HOSPs and EUSTs and rats.

I don't know what critters they're feeding our frozen morsels to other than vultures and snakes. They have a walk in deep freeze and there are buckets of white rats in there so presumably they take source into consideration when feeding? Vultures are well adapted to cleansing themselves of bacteria. Don't know how well adapted they are to ridding themselves of parasites in captivity but they've got vets on staff so the next time I run into one I'll ask how they deal with those issues. One thing though, I don't believe any of the raptors they have are capable of being released back to the wild. Their eagle is missing an eye and one of their raptors had to have a wing amputated as a result of some injury. I think something happened to all of the birds of prey they have that prohibited their release back to the wilds.

I have visited a little family owned zoo in another state that survives in part because of donations of fresh road kill deer that are brought to them by local residents and a county agency for their "retired" lions and tigers-
http://www.deyoungzoo.com/about.htm
I know there are other little zoos that eek out an existence because of road kill donations.

Something that might be of interest to you-
http://library.thinkquest.org/03oct/00946/accounts/micro.htm

Really sorry about your little cat. I've got two here that are older and I know the day is coming. One is 20-21 and the other is 19. They came from shelters so we aren't positive on the age but the one was supposedly around 10-12 when we brought him home and we have had him for 10 years. The other had been returned a few times and they tracked back his age to when he was a kitten so he was around 11 when we got him and we've had him 8 years. Our other cats are much younger and are all just over 10 years of age. They're a part of the family so I feel really bad for the hole in your heart you've got right now.

Why not just fed them to cats-Cats do WWAAY better eating dead prey then kibble, Felinefuture.com.