Those darn birds

[absolute0]

This morning I noticed that some creature (most likely a bird) has been feasting on my plants

Pecks on Frailea grahliana
https://imgur.com/a/O3ssa

Pecks on the Epithelantha micromeris
https://imgur.com/a/pFXGU

Tradescantia navicularis uprooted with some leaves being eaten
https://imgur.com/a/vzGz0

Leaves from the Anacampseros telephiastrum being eaten
https://imgur.com/a/UGHlJ

New growth on Stephania erecta being eaten (and to think this just came out of dormancy)
https://imgur.com/a/nDYf9

Crassula 'Moonglow' damage
https://imgur.com/a/5r95u

How can I keep those darn birds away? Also, what should I do with the damaged plants particularly the cacti?

[Storm]

I've never kept Cacti and succulents outside do have never had this problem, but if it is birds maybe something like the bird netting that gardeners use to keep birds off of fruits or some kind of bird scarer would help?

(There are lots of articles like this one around: https://www.growveg.com/guides/bird-con ... he-garden/ designed for gardeners that have tips and advice on keeping birds away from plants... maybe this will be of use?)

I hope you find a solution soon, and that someone can help out with advice on what to do about the damaged plants.

[ElieEstephane]

I have all my plants outside, cacti succulents and many more. Never had problems with birds and we do havw sparrows that will eat anything.
First you can use a shade cloth on a frame and drape it down over the plants.
Next you can put out some dry broken up wheat. They will eat it and bloat in their stomach which will kill them. You can scare them with a bb too

[keith]

Look like mice did that to me .

[kuni1234567]

I have been growing cactus and succulents for decades and never had problems with bird, mice and other animals except for a Aztekium that was partially eaten by a bird. I had a problem with a Mammillaria tetrancistra that was moved to another area after being attached to a cat. I finally moved the plant to an area that was protected and did not have any more problems. I see many birds flying all over my yard and neighbors' yards and have only had problems with squirrels eating green apricots from my tree.

[WayneByerly]

Deleted as a duplicate

[WayneByerly]

Deleted as a duplicte. Apologies...

[WayneByerly]

If it was mice, then I have NO idea whatsoever what to tell you to do. if, however, you are SURE it is birds, let me tell you about this. I was having problems with birds eating my strawberries so I went to Amazon and looked for "bird scares". What I found, you can get to via the following link, and I have to tell you that they were VERY effective in keeping birds away from my strawberries.

The Amazon link to the bird scares is:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01H6 ... UTF8&psc=1

They look like this:

bird scares.jpg (47.96 KiB) Viewed 1016 times

[hegar]

I do grow all my cacti, except for a Peniocereus maculatus and an Epiphyllum sp. outdoors. While I have not had any problem with rodents, I have had a few of my cacti pecked and pulled out of the ground by a bird. The culprit in my case was a curve-billed thrasher. These animals seem to look for food (insects, etc.) under the pebbles, which I use as an inorganic mulch around my cacti. I only did lose young plants, which the bird was able to uproot easily. Because of the dryness in our desert, birds at times also do peck into succulent plants to obtain water.
I have been protecting my cacti with stem pieces of Cylindropuntia, called "cholla" in Spanish. These birds are not stupid. They do recognize this kind of cactus as being especially nasty, because they do have barbed spines. The "treatment" must have worked, because I have not lost any more of my plants to these birds.

Harald

[absolute0]

This is the third bird attack I've experienced. First one happened last year. Most likely Eurasian tree sparrows. Maybe in their search for food they mistake the cacti for fruit and discover that they are delectable treats.

Thanks for the idea Wayne. I'm doing something similar albeit DIY. Putting CDs around the pots and hanging strips of metallic foil to scare em birds.

[WayneByerly]

I have been protecting my cacti with stem pieces of Cylindropuntia, called "cholla" in Spanish.
Harald

Unfortunately for me, I am intimately... familiar with/ knowledgeable of... "cholla" (pronounced "choi-yah") cactus. A very good choice.

[absolute0]

My DIY bird repellant. I'd have to rearrange these every few days though so the birds won't get too familiar.

https://imgur.com/a/w0OCl

I like the idea of using cholla to deter birds! I was also thinking of strategically placing viciously spined cacti to ward off critters. I'm thinking Ferocactus cylindraceus, Grusonia invicta, even Mammillaria beneckei.

[WayneByerly]

Nice rack of cactus. Since you were so kind as to provide pictures of your Cactus display, I will reciprocate and provide pictures of individual cactus from both my Greenhouse and the cactus I keep indoors. These pictures have been reduced to 1024 by 768 in order to keep download times for individual pictures to a reasonable rate. There are something like 92 pictures between the two Inside and Greenhouse links.

This is my primitive self-built greenhouse. I don't know why this system insist on turning the picture sideways. The picture as it exists on my tablet is rotated 90 degrees to the right from what you can see below:

@greenhouse.jpg (139.46 KiB) Viewed 990 times

This is a link to my Google Drive containing individual pictures of greenhouse cacti:
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id= ... 3wHrvgoiPf

This is a link to my Google Drive containing individual pictures of cacti kept indoors:
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id= ... wv41znIf3s

[absolute0]

Wow! Thanks for the link to the Google drive. It was also nice of you to include the IDs. It would come in handy as reference for identifying cacti and other succulents

[WayneByerly]

It would come in handy as reference for identifying cacti and other succulents

I just renamed the pictures and used the Family/Species name ... sure beats an uninformative set of letters and numbers that your camera assigns. This way the file names are actually useful.

My initial thought was only to provide you with pictures of my cacti seeing as how you had been so kind as to provide pictures of yours.

But here's an idea ... Maybe we (the members of this forum) should start a persistent Page (or Topic) so that people could post pictures of their cacti/succulents/caudiciforms ... that way we could have a number of pictures of each species, with and without flower, to assist members and visitors in their efforts at identification. And so that they can know what to expect from a plant at different points in its life.

BTW ... condolences on your damages ... I know how much mine mean to me.