Bert wrote:
Someone wrote the author of the gardening column in the St. Paul paper
claiming that he'd taught birds to hunt down and eat Japanese beetles.

He started by catching the bugs, freezing them and then leaving the
carcasses near his bird feeders. He says that the birds ate them and
after a while started going after the live bugs.

Does this seem at all likely?

http://www.twincities.com/ci_2116635...-watering-lawn

His story starts about half-way down the page.

thanks for posting this, it will give me
something else to figure out.

i can't say it works for sure (we don't do
bird feeders here), but as of this morning i
started leaving the dead bugs on the stepping
stones in the pathways and we'll see if the
birds pick up on them.

i think the japanese beetle coloring is very
much in the range of colors that birds don't
see easily. giving them some practice bugs
that they can see sure can't hurt. they're
nice fat beetles so other than perhaps for
toxic reasons i dunno why a bird wouldn't
eat them normally if they could find them.
they are a bit tough to get off the undersides
of leaves, so it would have to be a fairly
persistent bird.

around here there are so many grasshoppers
and other bugs it doesn't seem that japanese
beetles would be a favorite, but hey, i'll
give this a try and see what happens.

up until today i hadn't seen many japanese
beetles on the beans, but they decided they
really like the edamame soybeans so i picked
eight of those plants and squished 'em on the
stepping stone. they've been out there two
hours now, so when i go out to check the beans
i'll see if they are still there...


songbird