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birdfeedingSummer is the season of bird nests, hungry babies, gardening, and caterpillars eating your plants. But that's okay. These things all go together with a little planning.
Handpicking caterpillars off your crops is tedious, but it's the most Earth-friendly way to deal with them. You could just step on them, but there's a better use for the little pests: free bird food! Almost all birds raise their chicks on caterpillars, even if the adults eat seeds or something else. It takes a LOT to fledge a nest of chicks -- up to 10,000 for a batch of chickadees.
Among the garden plants most prone to caterpillars are brassicas (kale, cabbage, mustard, and broccoli) for cabbage worms, beans and peas for some skippers, and tomatoes for tomato hornworm or tobacco hornworm. These you can pick off and feed to birds. But if you see caterpillars on carrots, dill, fennel, or parsley then leave them alone or transfer them to your pollinator garden -- those are baby swallowtails.
You can feed insect-eating birds with live mealworms, which run $5-15 for a smallish carton. Dried mealworms most often go for $15-30 per package, unless you find a really tiny one. And they go fast, because so many birds love them. A great use for these products, however, is to teach your yardbirds to use a mealworm feeder. Here are some plans to make your own. Teacup and totem feeders also work. You need one with a good-sized glass dish or some other slick container so caterpillars can't crawl out of it. Birds don't take long to realize that you approaching that feeder means high-value food on offer. They will watch you and fly right down. Which brings us to the free bird food ...
To handpick caterpillars, look for plants with holes in t he leaves or bare stems with the leaves eaten off. They like to hide underneath stems and leaves. Some will roll a leaf to make a little shelter. Pull them off and drop them into a deep bowl with slippery sides. You may want to wear gloves or use insect tongs for this. Do you have kids? They may be motivated to help fill a bowl with caterpillars once they realize what a bird feeding frenzy it will start.
Then simply pour the caterpillars into the mealworm feeder, and stand back. This is a good time to take pictures of birds if you enjoy doing that. Act fast because they will empty that dish in no time.
Handpicking caterpillars off your crops is tedious, but it's the most Earth-friendly way to deal with them. You could just step on them, but there's a better use for the little pests: free bird food! Almost all birds raise their chicks on caterpillars, even if the adults eat seeds or something else. It takes a LOT to fledge a nest of chicks -- up to 10,000 for a batch of chickadees.
Among the garden plants most prone to caterpillars are brassicas (kale, cabbage, mustard, and broccoli) for cabbage worms, beans and peas for some skippers, and tomatoes for tomato hornworm or tobacco hornworm. These you can pick off and feed to birds. But if you see caterpillars on carrots, dill, fennel, or parsley then leave them alone or transfer them to your pollinator garden -- those are baby swallowtails.
You can feed insect-eating birds with live mealworms, which run $5-15 for a smallish carton. Dried mealworms most often go for $15-30 per package, unless you find a really tiny one. And they go fast, because so many birds love them. A great use for these products, however, is to teach your yardbirds to use a mealworm feeder. Here are some plans to make your own. Teacup and totem feeders also work. You need one with a good-sized glass dish or some other slick container so caterpillars can't crawl out of it. Birds don't take long to realize that you approaching that feeder means high-value food on offer. They will watch you and fly right down. Which brings us to the free bird food ...
To handpick caterpillars, look for plants with holes in t he leaves or bare stems with the leaves eaten off. They like to hide underneath stems and leaves. Some will roll a leaf to make a little shelter. Pull them off and drop them into a deep bowl with slippery sides. You may want to wear gloves or use insect tongs for this. Do you have kids? They may be motivated to help fill a bowl with caterpillars once they realize what a bird feeding frenzy it will start.
Then simply pour the caterpillars into the mealworm feeder, and stand back. This is a good time to take pictures of birds if you enjoy doing that. Act fast because they will empty that dish in no time.
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Date: 2024-06-13 08:40 am (UTC)I put a beer trap out for the infernal slugs, and when it was full of squishy little corpses, emptied it out in the spot where I regularly put food for the local crows. Is beer-flavoured slug likely to be considered a treat?
Thoughts
Date: 2024-06-13 08:55 am (UTC)It's hard to spot the little green buggers on those, but they are beloved of birds.
>> I put a beer trap out for the infernal slugs, and when it was full of squishy little corpses, emptied it out in the spot where I regularly put food for the local crows. Is beer-flavoured slug likely to be considered a treat? <<
Crows will eat fermented fruit on the ground, so it's possible.
Frogs and toads love to eat slugs. So do snakes, turtles, shrews, ducks, starlings and some other birds.