Ruud Kleinpaste: Natural pest control by your local birds

Last week I got rather excited with my bird feeding exercise in the garden – silvereyes everywhere, bellbirds becoming part of the ornithological gig, starlings in good flocks, hedge-sparrows in hedges.   As the winter is getting near, the birds will come and visit your generous fodder in good numbers: sugar water, bits of meat and dripping, but also remnants of very ripe bananas, fruit bits, and anything that is edible.  One of the biggest attractants is sugar water and the old bits of meat – dozens and dozens of birds will make their way to the smorgasbord.   An important point we need to consider about feeding birds in your garden is that you’ll need to keep going till spring. Your generosity is something the birds rely on and when you stop, there will be consequences for the artificially high populations created by extra feeding.  I often catch large numbers of silvereyes when they dash in the direction of the food resources; they often have no idea that my very fine bird-catching net is not always visible. All I do is get the birds and give them a light-weight metal and numerical band around their leg, so I can always tell who is who in our garden. Hundreds of them each autumn/winter, individually coded.   In some parts of the South Island, we also get Bellbirds and Tui.  You might think you will have “lost” them from the garden when spring is moving in – they are getting very secretive around nesting time, but they will remember your place as a heaven full of food.  Yes, they know where you live – I reckon they’ll also know what kind of plants you have in the garden. And the most important aspect of it all is that in spring and summer they’ll come and do the pest control business for you by scouting the scale insects and aphids, psyllids, whitefly, and mealybugs from your plants to feed their kids.   LOTS OF FOOD!  Over the past decades I have been doing some local research in my gardens (West Auckland, East Auckland, and some spots in Canterbury) where I observed the silvereyes, tūi, and bellbirds literally hoovering the small insects from our plants.   Seeing as I hate spraying systemic insecticides, I like these birds with their knowledge of entomology and the location of the food – I have great respect for their job in our garden.   Oh, and by the way: tūi and bellbirds will probably do a significant job of pollination in your garden as well.   What’s not to like?  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.