As the weather turns from winter and warms up throughout spring and summer many homeowners turn their attention to preparing their lawn to look full, green, and healthy. One of the most important steps in lawn care is seeding, but it can be frustrating when birds come along and eat all your seed.
Do your efforts to grow a lush, green lawn end up being ruined by pesky birds? You’re not alone. Fortunately, there are a few things you can do to keep birds from eating your grass seed. In this blog post, we’ll discuss three methods you can use to protect your seed and ensure a successful lawn. Read on to learn more!
Why Do Birds Eat Grass Seed?
Birds love to eat grass seed, but why? Well, for one, grass seed is a great source of food. It contains carbohydrates and protein that are essential to birds’ diets. In addition, some seeds have a thin coating around them that tastes somewhat sweet to birds, making it more appealing.
However, there’s more to it than just tasty food! Grass seed is easy to find, doesn’t scatter when eaten, and can be found in a variety of locations. Birds enjoy eating from bird feeders, but when the seed level drops low they search for food elsewhere. Once they discover your lawn is filled with tasty grass seed there’s no going back!
How To Keep Birds Away
Birds are pesky animals. They don’t easily just go away, and they typically come back to your lawn after you try to scare them off. Here are some things you can do to keep birds from eating your grass seed.
Remove Food Sources
Before planting grass seed, be sure to remove seed from your bird feeder. This includes the tray underneath the feeder as well as seed scattered on the ground nearby. If you have other food sources available, make sure to remove them or make them inaccessible to birds. For example, if you have a water source for native birds consider installing netting around it so they can’t get near it.
Netting
One of the best ways to keep birds from eating your grass seed is to cover it with a thin layer of netting, burlap, or even plastic. This is also one of the trickiest methods to use because you need to make sure the netting, or whatever barrier you’re using, lies clear and flat on the ground so it doesn’t interfere with germination. If done properly, however, this method can be very effective.
Visual Deterrents
Scarecrows are commonplace for a reason. They’re effective at keeping birds away. Birds are very visual creatures, and placing a visual deterrent or two can keep them from feeding in your lawn. A scarecrow can work, as can a plastic owl, hawk, or fox – basically, any of the bird’s natural predators would work great. You can also use shiny reflective tape hanging from trees, or old CD’s even, as the random motion and light can potentially scare the birds away.
Sound Deterrents
Instead of just using visual deterrents to keep the birds away, you can also use noisy ones as well. Birds are not keen to settle or feed in a location that is filled with noise. Consider putting up wind chimes or hanging some tin cans, and chime them every time birds come near.
You can also purchase ultrasonic noise machines that create noise the birds can hear, but humans cannot. This could affect your dog as well though, so be wary!
Plant Extra Seeds
This is a unique idea, because you’re not actually trying to keep the birds away from your grass seed, but rather you’re throwing out too much seed so that birds can eat some and you can still grow a thick and lush lawn.
Birds are attracted to areas where they can easily find food, so make sure the area around your lawn is filled with seed. When there’s more seed in an area birds will eat less of it. If you put out too much seed then some of it will be wasted, but if you put out too little seed then birds will eat it all.
In Summary
If you are tired of birds ruining your freshly planted grass seed, we hope this blog has provided some tips on how to keep them away. There is no surefire way of guaranteeing protection against bird damage, but by using one or more methods together with some patience – it can be done!
Using multiple techniques will help ensure success as long as they’re applied correctly and consistently enough over time. So if you have been watching your beautiful new grass grow day after day while being eaten by pesky critters at night, don’t give up hope just yet! Remember, if all else fails and you have tried everything we’ve suggested here but still find yourself struggling with bird infestation issues then contact us directly! Our team is always happy to answer questions about gardening or pest control problems.
