Birds are a very important component of the ecosystem.
The importance of birds includes brightening our days with beautiful melodies to even clearing pests from the garden among others.
But just like it is a norm, everything normally has its merits and demerits.
Birds can be such a nuisance when you are planning to sow grass seeds with the intention of making your lawn prettier. These birds can clear your seedbeds within no minutes.
But do birds eat grass seed? Are birds eating grass seed okay?
How can you prevent birds from eating your grass seeds? These are very important questions that every gardener must be worried about. But not anymore as this article has all the answers to these questions.
Read along.
How to Keep Birds From Eating New Grass Seed?
Grass seeds do take between 4 and 6 weeks to germinate. This can be quite a long time to keep watching over your seeds.
Actually, nobody would like to forego their daily activities just to watch over their grass seeds for a whole month.
For this reason, we’ve come up with some of the most convenient ways of protecting grass seed from birds.
You can use any of them and you’ll without any doubt get over this problem.
1. Use bird repellant grass seed or sow extra seeds
Currently, there are bird repellant grass seeds available in the local home improvement and garden stores. These seeds have been coated with a substance that doesn’t taste fine for the birds.
If you happen to sow these seeds, rest assured that almost all of the seeds will sprout.
The coating simply does the job of keeping birds away but does not in any way affect the germination time of the seeds.
On the other hand, you can sow extra seeds so that if the birds decide to feast on others, there will still be more than enough left for your lawn.
The only bad thing with this excessive sowing is that you have to incur the extra costs of buying the additional seeds.
This means you better go for the repellant seeds in case they are available in your local dealer shop.
2. Use bird deterrents
Birds are known to fear objects that make funny sounds or whirl around. Having known this, why don’t you make use of this when you are planting grass seeds?
Well, you can use stuff like a rubber snake to scare the birds away. Birds and snakes can’t be put together.
Things like helium balloons, pinwheels, and old compact discs are some of the many objects you can use to keep birds away from your freshly sown lawn.
The good thing about these objects is that they are easily available and at cheaper prices.
You only have to make sure that the deterrents are uniformly placed on the lawn so that there are no places left uncovered.
Birds can at times be so witty, especially if they realize that this stuff isn’t dangerous after all.
So it’s important that you keep checking how effective the deterrents are more frequently. You can re-arrange the deterrents occasionally so that birds don’t get used to them.
3. Protecting grass seed from birds
One best way to stop birds from eating grass seed is by simply covering the seeds.
Having sown your grass seeds a few inches into the soil, adding some layers of mulches, fine netting or any other reliable seed covers will help protect your seeds from the birds.
The mulch should, however, be loose or light so as to allow in light and water especially when the seedlings are beginning to sprout. This is where hay and straw become so important.
Ensure that the mulch only covers about 75% of the soil with the remaining section left visible.
Remember to remove the mulch later on when the seedlings have now grown well.
If the birds in your area are the stubborn ones that will still perch on the mulch and eat the seeds still or the area is so windy, then you can consider using nets.
Use stakes to raise the nets to about 3 inches from the ground so that birds can’t peck through the net holes. Use stones to secure the net edges.
4. Use bird distractors
There are different types of distractors you can use to keep the birds away.
You can use other bird foods to trick them away from eating your freshly sown grass seeds. Divert their attention to bird feeders that are visible and full of bird food and water.
By doing this, you will keep them away from your lawn.
What else will they come to look for in the lawn when they already have plenty of food and water at their disposal?
Additionally, you can use noise distractions to keep the birds away.
Anything that has the capability of producing some noise will perfectly work to your advantage as this will keep the birds away from your grass seeds. As mentioned earlier, birds don’t like noisy areas.
5. Use of fake predators
Get yourself fake predators like plastic hawks and snakes and have them strategically placed in your seeded area.
This is another way of keeping birds from eating new grass seed. You should, however, remember to change the position of your “predators” after a few days.
Wrapping Up
Birds eating grass seed is not a new thing. It has been there for as long as the two have been in existence. Birds love grass seed and there is little that can be done to halt this love affair.
But as you have seen above, there are still ways of stopping birds from eating grass seed.
It doesn’t cost much to put into practice some of the methods explained above. You simply have to choose one or two that will most likely work to your expectations.
Don’t you think the above methods will be of great help?
Do you have any questions or anything that worked for you that you might add to this? Feel free to share your thoughts with us.
