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How to Keep Birds Away From Your Garden

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U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

Tips for Keeping Birds Away from Your Garden

Catherine Boeckmann
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Birds are a welcome addition to the garden, but if the crows are devouring your corn and the jays are eating your berries, here are a few ways to keep birds away from your garden.

How to Keep Birds Away from Your Garden

  • Have a party! Scary balloons (vinyl balls with menacing faces) are available at garden centers and online. Make your own using shiny Mylar balloons, and secure them to posts around your garden. Tie shiny ribbon (or surveyor’s tape) from the balloons for more effect, and don’t forget to move them every few days.
  • Build a barrier. To keep nibblers at bay, place inverted crates or disposable cups (with the bottoms cut out) over vulnerable seedlings. Chicken wire can also be laid over a seedbed. (As seedlings grow, raise it slightly using boards or bricks.) “I made a cone out of window screen cloth for my tomato plants,” says a gardener in Maryland. “When they got too big for the cones, I switched to netting.”
  • Cast a net. “Netting is the only certain way of deterring birds,” says Pippa Greenwood, author of American Horticultural Society Pests & Diseases. To prevent snagging on twigs or thorns, some gardeners construct an inexpensive framework to cover their plants. Use bamboo poles, fence posts, or tall stakes. Drape the netting over the framework, so it reaches the ground, and anchor it to the ground with bent wire for wind protection. If your garden rows aren’t too long, consider making a V-shaped “tent” above the row to protect seedlings until they are rooted well enough to resist birds pulling on them.
  • Go high-tech. Birdbusters makes a sophisticated screech owl to frighten even the bravest of birds. The owl spins in the wind and has a microchip inside that emits the sound of an attacking hawk.
  • Go low-tech. One old-time cure was to soak a few quarts of dried corn in whiskey and scatter it over the fields for the crows. They would get corned!
  • Remember the benefits. Although some birds can be nuisances, they are also hardworking garden allies, munching away on annoying pests like snails, slugs, and harmful insects. Keep this in mind, and you may feel more generous toward our feathered friends. 

With these simple solutions, you should be able to keep birds away from your precious crops and flowers!

If you are specifically dealing with crows in the garden, see our Crows page.

Read Next

Garden Pests
About The Author

Catherine Boeckmann

Catherine Boeckmann loves nature, stargazing, and gardening so it’s not surprising that she and The Old Farmer’s Almanac found each other. She leads digital content for the Almanac website, and is also a certified master gardener in the state of Indiana. Read More from Catherine Boeckmann
 

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Comments

Chrissy hathorn (not verified)

4 years 6 months ago

I just wanted to let the person, i think its susan french... that the "CD" Idea works fabulous in my sunflower garden.

Susan French (not verified)

4 years 8 months ago

This is funny. People have a hard time believing finches can destroy your garden. I’ve watched them for two weeks now . It is amazing. Fattest little bastards you’ve ever seen. I’m trying cd’s and streamers now. If doesn’t work I’ll shoot them

Anonymous (not verified)

4 years 8 months ago

I try to keep my flower beds in pristine condition, but every once in a while, I'll have a few robins or crows make their way into these beds and they actually steal small mouthfuls worth of my mulch. The mulch I purchased wasn't cheap. I'm afraid if I install netting, I won't be able to remove any future weeds. What am I to do?

Margret watson (not verified)

5 years 8 months ago

For the past week we have been woken early by crows banging and pecking against our patio window. Covering it in scratch marks, droppings and sometimes blood, so they must injure themselves. Have tried scarecrow and scaring them off but they still come back. Any ideas please.

Jean Chapman (not verified)

6 years 5 months ago

The stupid little sparrow's eat my POT'S. First time I had a really big pot with a thick rim and the pot flared out with sort of a ridge. They sat on that and ate a hole about 6" x 4" Had the rim so thin the pot was not good so I took it to the back by the water for them so they could enjoy and leave the rest of mine alone. Oh, no. Didn't touch it then. It was clay and had a green glaze on it and I had even spray painted clear over that. Now they are working on the regular clay pot I have.

Deborah VanDervoort (not verified)

6 years 6 months ago

Having a problem with chipmunks eating my sunflower seedlings ! They actually pull the out by roots and gnaw on the stalks. This is so disappointing to find them like this. Can I root the sunflower stalks to salvage them?

Sincere (not verified)

6 years 8 months ago

I'm worried that birds, rabbits, insects and squirrels will all get into my newly sown carrot, chard, and radish seeds. Can I cover the container that I planted them in with plastic wrap to protect them? Should I poke holes in the plastic?

The plastic wrap would be no match for a hungry squirrel, so we would recommend using something a little more sturdy, like window screening or hardware cloth (a screen made of metal). If it’s fastened securely to your containers, the critters shouldn’t be able to get in. Don’t use bird netting in this case, as it can snag animals’ feet too easily and won’t block insects. 

Tricia (not verified)

7 years 7 months ago

I beg you to remove the suggestion involving fishing line and thread. Those and similar things (baling twine for one example) get entangled around birds' legs and the harder the birds try to get free of it, the more entangled they become, often ending up with it wrapped around their wings and entire bodies. Many birds of many species have died horrible, lingering, deaths due to such items. The Montana Osprey Project has been trying to educate the public about the hazards to birds (not just ospreys) posed by these items. They have seen many cases of bird deaths from them and have even posted a photo (it is on their Facebook page, I THINK) of one osprey totally wrapped up in baling twine that it had picked up somewhere and brought back to the nest. When that bird was found, it was dangling from the nest, dead, wrapped in the twine. It was the male of a pair of birds and it had died dangling below its nest at the same time its mate was incubating their eggs on the nest above him.