On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 11:03:00 +0200, Dave Hill
wrote:

On 12 Apr, 19:14, rbel wrote:
We have ten clumps of wild primrose in our wildflower beds. This
evening
I noticed that every clump had been 'attacked' and dozens and dozens of
flower heads
neatly removed at the joint between stem and the base of the flower.
The
flowers remain on or near to the clumps. Two clumps have had every
flower
removed. There is no sign of damage to the petals or any indication of
other injury to the stem. I assume that it is probably a bird due to
the
precision of the 'cut' at the base of the flower head. I have seen the
usual wood pigeons, blackbirds, dunnocks and finches around the beds
today
but no untoward activity. The adjacent planting of cowslips is
untouched.

Grateful for any thoughts.

--
rbel

In my young days working in the Parks in Hastings we used to have to
thread the polyanthus (that is putting black cotton thread across the
beds feom twig to twig stuck into the soik to make a web over the
plants).
This was done to stop the sparrows from removing all the flowers, they
would pick the individual flowers from the stems and use them in some
form of display, they could strip a bead in a couple of days, they
always left the flowers behind, they didn't take them away.
David Hill


Many thanks for this. We don't have any sparrows but there has been a
male greenfinch lurking in the wildflower beds the last couple of days -
he could be the culprit. The two resident females just sit on the seed
feeders and ignore him, so perhaps this has been a forlorn attempt to
encourage them. Thinking about it I suppose that alternatively it could
be feeding on the very base of the flower - it appears from a little
online research that the ovary is located in this position. I will have
to collect some of the removed flowers and look at them under a magnifying
glass. As a temporary measure we have covered the primroses.
--
rbel