You’ve put in the hard graft sowing a new lawn or overseeding your existing lawn.
Then as soon as your back’s turned, there’s a flock of birds chomping on it.
GRRRRR!
What’s a lawnsmith to do?
4 Easy Ways to Stop Birds Eating Grass Seed
The problem might be better or worse depending on when you sow your seed.
For example, during autumn many birds migrate out of the UK for winter. When you sow seed in the autumn, there will be a lot fewer birds to eat it. On the other hand, birds migrate back to the UK in the spring – and they’ll be hungry! our grass seed will make an easy meal!
Regardless of the time of year, there will be birds around. So you’ll want to do all you can to protect your precious seed.
So with that said, here are 4 ways to keep birds off your grass seed;
- Visual deterrents
- Noise deterrents
- Cover the area
- Provide an alternative food source
Let’s look at each in a little more detail.
Cover the Area
You can prevent birds from landing on a seeded area at all by covering the area. Either with garden netting like this Tikola bird netting from Amazon. This makes watering the area easy.
Or, plastic sheeting like this one. You’ll have to remove it to water the lawn, but plastic sheeting creates a greenhouse effect that warms the soil and speeds up germination.
It’s easy to cover small lawns or areas but it becomes tricky (but still doable) on large areas.
Creating Visual Deterrents
Birds aren’t the bravest animals so it’s easy to put them off landing on your lawn by using a visual deterrent.
There are several ways you can do this;
- Use old CDs – tie your old CDs either to stakes or on a string line across your lawn. As the wind blows them around, the reflective surface will put the birds off.
- Use reflective tape – if you don’t have any old CDs, this Defenders Reflective Ribbon works in the same way. It’s cheaper too.
- Use animal decoys – pigeons and other birds are on the menu of bigger, scarier birds of prey. So use a decoy like this flying bird scarer. You may have seen farmers use these in their fields. If they’re good enough for farmers, they’re good enough for us.
Create Noise Deterrents
Birds don’t like noise either so you can prevent them from even entering your garden in the first place by using;
- Ultrasonic pest repellents – like this solar-powered one from Amazon. Because they’re ultrasonic, the sound they make is beyond human hearing. And they will keep other pets away like next doors cat, foxes etc.
- Windchimes – can create a rather relaxing sound when the wind blows. For us humans at least, birds don’t like them. They’re cheaper than pest repellents too. Make sure you get the ones for outdoors.
Provide An Alternative Food Source
This is my favourite way to stop birds eating my grass seed.
The problem with the other methods is that you’re putting the birds off from coming into your garden at all.
So instead of denying them food, why not give them a better alternative? By hanging a bird feeder or two in a different part of your garden, you’ll attract birds away from your lawn.
I have a couple of these hanging from the trees near my lawn.
Doing this will also attract different types of birds into your garden.. And who doesn’t want that?!
Unless you own a killer cat!
To Sum Up
Grass seed isn’t cheap. Especially if you’ve forked out for the best seed you can afford.
It doesn’t matter if you’ve overseeded an existing lawn or you’ve sown seed to create a new lawn. Watching the birds chomping on it is pretty annoying.
These 4 methods of preventing our feathered friends from eating grass seed work well.
Choose the best solution for your garden and your grass seed will germinate and grow in a few weeks. Once it’s established, you can remove all deterrents.
But keep the bird feeder!
