My wife and I have lived in this home for four summers now. For the first two summers we enjoyed watching the butterflies, dragonflies, hummingbirds and the rare hummingbird moth.
At the beginning of our third summer we had a new visitor that found a location to biuld a nest on a shutter of our house. It was a bird called the Eastern Pheobe. I watched the pair biuld from scratch a nest made of moss and mud. It took three days. It was all good until a week later when I watched one bird fly from the nest and eat a butterfly. This happened over and over again and it was obvious that all the butterflies were now gone and they started to eat the dragonflies. I had also watched them scare off the hummingbirds. Because they had eggs in the nest I allowed them to stay for that summer.
The following summer the birds came back. I discouraged them from nesting by scraping the nest from the shutter each time they started it. It worked. Unfortunately they went to the home next door and still used my back yard as a feeding ground. Another summer without butterflies.
Yesterday I see the birds are back and they are biulding their nest again on the same shutter. I detest indiscrimanant killing of wildlife except in the case of pest's and I do consider this bird a pest.
Do you think it would be wrong for me to take out my pellet gun and destroy this bird? Even I dont like the idea, but I may not have a choice if I want to have butterflies and humming birds around this summer.
DJK