Feathered friend or foe? Allotments, birds and biodiversity

When fruit bushes are ready to harvest the first pickers are, all too often, the birds which makes them less than popular!  I have also heard more than a few people complain about the birds getting to their corn before they could as well.  As a result, often our first instinct is to put birds in the ‘foe’ category and do what we can to protect our crops.

The whole point of scarecrows is shockingly … to scare crows (although pigeons are perhaps more of an issue at Farnborough Hill Allotments)!  A walk around the allotment site will shows a few different scarers.

There are those traditional scarers which look (more or less) like people - dressed-up manikins or sticks in a cross which have clothes hanging on and a hat.  However there are other scarers around as well.

Birds of prey are deterrents to smaller birds as well as handy hunters of mice and rats which can be a pest to our crops and our sheds.  There are statues and kites in the shape of birds of prey such a owls and eagles which can be bought.  We also have a couple of real life kestrels which like to visit our allotment and help us out.

Wheel spinners can also works well and you can either make your own or buy them.

No method will keep all the birds away and nor should they as, despite the annoyance and cost that can be incurred due to having a hungry bird population in and around your plot they do have their up side.  The primary food of most birds in the wild is insects. Without birds feasting on these insects, we could expect large changes in our ecosystem, including a loss of crops and trees. Insect infestations are deadly to plants, particularly crops and forests.

‘It might be a little extreme to say that we’d be wading knee-deep in invertebrates if birds disappeared – but maybe not that extreme. A recent study has shown that birds eat 400-500 million tons of insects a year. In China, two-thirds of the diet of House Swift Apus nipalensis consists of agricultural pests, and in forests across the Americas, Evening Grosbeak Hesperiphona vespertina becomes a superhero during outbreaks of Spruce Budworm, providing biological control worth $1,820 per square kilometre. Birds are so efficient that nest boxes have become a pest control practice throughout Europe.’ https://www.birdlife.org

My conclusion is that, ultimately, birds are our feathered friends on the allotment as they perform an invaluable role to us as plot holders and to the planet's biodiversity as a whole.  However, having deterrents around can not only limit some of the tasty crop options from the birds’ diet but can also make our plots a little more colourful and inviting (to our non-feathered friends).