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Tuesday 26 April 2011

Organic gardening; controlling pigeons on cabbages or kale, Spis bladene variety.

Pigeons damage and devour my Spis bladene Kale plant below.
The pigeons perch on the leaves and flower stems, breaking them as they devour the plant.
I let this grand Kale from Denmark go to seed and treat it a a cottage garden plant -- the seeds moving it around the garden from year to year.  But pigeons do a lot of damage.
I have a friend.  Stare hard at the above picture (or expand it) and right in the center you will see the fox that seems to live underneath a yew hedge in my garden.  Every evening at 19.50hr the fox trots through his/her (my) front garden and into the road and his/her adjacent gardens.  I do see lots of pigeon feathers from time to time; especially this morning.

Well done foxy!  What a fine breakfast for you.  And one pigeon, which will no longer eat my kale.
I had no time to move the carcase this morning.
By evening, I presume that the crows had nearly finished what the fox had left.  I hope that the crows are full and stop fishing in my pond for newts or tadpoles, if any are left from the newts' predation.

So three cheers for foxes... for organically controlling the pigeon pests.
And three cheers for crows.... for tidying up after the fox failed to eat up all of its breakfast.

The following morning everything was gone except the feathers.  Well done badgers, foxes or crows, whoever enjoyed picking over the carcass.

1 comment:

Ryan said...

This is sort of sick and sadistic, but in an innocuous and pleasant way. Thank you for posting this; it took a days worth of murderous instincts out of me by breakfast

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