Birds look great when they visit gardens. Their chirping makes us feel lively and closer to nature, until they start pecking at our vegetables. Birds are also responsible for pollination and pest control, but many don’t prefer their gardens or farmlands to get flocked with birds.
Pigeons are known to rob cabbages off their fields, crows destroy corns, and berries are bluejays’ favourites.
But let’s just take an attempt to shoo the birds and not kill them. We already have polluted the earth a lot making it unsuitable for them to survive. At least for once, let’s not adopt means that would hurt or kill the birds.
Here are a few successful ways you can use to drive away the birds off your garden or farmland.
- Use Garden Mesh or Green Garden Netting:
Putting up mesh or garden netting across your crops is one of the safest yet effective ways to keep birds away from your garden. This keeps your plants protected from birds or larger insects, allowing butterflies and bees for pollination purposes.
Keep your garden mesh pulled taught to avoid potential injuries to the birds. Also, keep a careful eye and replace the netting before it deteriorates.
Brands like Keplin provide green garden netting at affordable prices, which are resistant to tear.
- Pin Chicken Wire at ground level:
Chicken wires can be pinned to the ground to protect the seeds that you have planted recently. It would also save the freshly sown tubers like potatoes, turnips, beets or carrots, from getting damaged by the scratching and pecking of birds and chickens.
As and when the plants start growing you can increase and adjust the height of the chicken wire.
- Garden Fleece to save your crops:
Horticultural or garden fleece is a type of sheet used to cover plants. Put rocks on the sides to keep it in place, and remove it when it is harvesting time.
It is mostly used to protect your favourite crops from frosts during the coldest months.
But the fleece is also used to save your greens from getting attacked by birds, before you get an opportunity to harvest them.
- Place toy ‘birds of prey’ and fake snakes to shoo the crop-eaters:
These fake owls, falcons or snakes, will shoo away the garden enemies and save your green goodies.
- The age-old practice of Scarecrows:
Scarecrows have been used to deter the crop destroyers (read: birds) since long.
Make your scarecrow lightweight so that it can sway. It also needs to be relocated weekly. Keep old dresses handy so that you can change the outfits from time to time.
- Decorate with Terror Eyes balloons:
These large balloons, often resembling the Halloween pumpkin are one of the most commonly used bird deterrents. These balloons move easily even in a light breeze.
Terror eyes balloons can be easily bought at gardening stores, or can be made at home by painting big eyes on yellow or orange beach balls.
- Having a Pet will make your job way easier:
A well-trained dog or an outdoor cat will definitely keep birds away from munching on your products of hard labour.
Though with cats you can face a different problem of them using your tilled crop beds as makeshift litter boxes.
- Wind Chimes can be helpful too:
Objects that sway or make sounds suddenly are great to drive away the winged-thieves.
Place them within your garden for better results. Metal or reflective ones will have double the effect.
- Place wind-activated Garden Spinners:
Those pretty looking spinners not only decorate your garden but also shoo away the birds planning to attack your veggies. But remember to relocate your spinners now and then just like you would do with other stationary objects.
- Make use of Reflective Items:
If you have old cds or pieces of that broken glass window pane, recycle those to deter the birds. All you need to do is attach them to strings and tie it around long poles or trees.
Just as birds dislike objects swaying suddenly, they are never really fond of shiny reflective items, because they flash light.
While garden mesh or green garden netting is the easiest and one of the most useful methods to save your plants, it also doesn’t affect the birds in any way. We have given quite a number of ways for you to try, and we hope we all will act together in saving crops without hurting the birds or other smaller animals.
