I feel like I'm in a horror film whenever I look outside after planting a deciduous bush. I know that birds love some bushes for their berries, but I've never heard of birds chopping up bushes with their beaks! I looked outside and saw a few hacking away at some brand-new blueberry bushes, and before I could get to them to shoo them away, it was too late. They were stubs. Needless to say, they never recovered. The chinese elms I planted met the same fate in seconds. Now the birds have turned to my 3-year-old dogwoods, which were beautiful last year, and seem to have somehow been spared until now. One of the five is halfway gone, and I have noticed a few twigs on the ground around the others.
the sensorng is automatic. there are a set of text strings that are scaned for & sensored. don't take it personal. it actually serves for some comic relieve at times! that "word" used to be used as a male chicken (at least as far back as the greeks). male chickens are VERY fertile... so it came to also be used for a particular portion of the male anatomy. then 'round the turn of the last century the victorians came up with the new word "rooster" to be used as the name for a male chicken. this caused the text strin you used to be viewed as "dirty" when used alone. it's just prudishness, but some are offended.
Evil succeeds when good people do nothing. No trees were killed or animals harmed in the sending of this message; however a great many electrons were horribly inconvenienced.
Posts: 697 | Location: SoCal Zone 11. MO Zone 6 | Registered: February 11, 2002
Hungry birds! Wrap your trees, quickly, with netting or chicken wire. Hang up some dangly things, all over the yard to spook the birds. Streamers, flagging tape, cd's (those throw away freebies). Make your plants taste bad (spray them with cayenne pepper).
See if you can find one of the motion sensors that cause a sprinkler to turn on. THey are available mail order, but a large nursery/hardware in your area might have such a thing.
Get a large squirt gun, one of those mega blasters and keep it handy and filled...and use it on the birds.
The cayenne pepper might not work for the birds, It does work great in bird feeders to keep the squirrels out. I use my pest chasing weinerdog to keep the squirrels and birds and most other critters out of the garden. Shiny moving things seem to bother birds.
You might try hanging up cds from software companies. They are shiney and can be strung so they clank togather. Might as well get some good out of AOL.
I think they're starlings. They act as if they belong to some sort of bird mafia or something...they swagger around this neighborhood terrorizing harmless, unsuspecting plants and blasting them to pieces. Come to think of it, when I describe it that way, maybe I should pretend I'm Elliot Ness and go after them with a bb gun...
Forget the pepper, but go for the shiny clangy fluttery wavy stuff. If you can discourage them repeatedly they should leave. Netting is an option but can get pricy if your trees/shrubs are big.
