Organic Insect Control – Small Birds • 05.06.10
Superb Fairy-wrens on insect control patrol - cucumber vine rack.
One of the best ways to reduce insect attack in your garden and vegie patch is to maintain your biodiversity. The more diversity you have the more balanced your ecosystem and the more difficult it is for one species to take over. We find the small birds are a key link in reducing insect attack in our vegie patch. We have had a new family of Superb Fairy-wrens – Malurus cyaneus move back in 10 months after the bushfire that burnt our bush block. They move across our block and through our vegie patch, such as our cucumber rack, for hours every day scanning for insects to eat.
To ensure you maintain habitat requirements for small birds, such as fairy-wrens you need to have a dense shrub layer amongst your indigenous vegetation. They are very vulnerable and need shrubs (bushes), from ground level to 1 – 2m high to hide in. The shrubs need to form continuous clumps, one isolated shrub surrounded by mowed lawn doesn’t provide them the hiding places they need. They do like open patches (like a vegie patch) and raised vantage points amongst the shrubs so that they can dash in and out of their hiding place.
Dead shrubs form vantage structure for small birds.
We realised how important this layer of vegetation was as the small birds only returned to our burnt bush block when we had a good, thick cover of shrubs which took about 10 months to fill out after the bushfire event. One of the saddest events since the bushfire was to watch most of our neighbours mow (and kill) their indigenous shrubs through the spring and summer just as they were re-generating after the bushfire. This critical habitat component is also apparently a bushfire threat and recommended for removal to protect human homes. Dilemma….. no good for protecting the homes of the small birds and who knows which other wildlife species!
We ensure that we maintain our indigenous shrub sized vegetation – the plants that fill out from the ground to 2 metres height or so. Especially having indigenous shrubs abundant near areas like our vegie patch to entice these small birds, our organic pest control, to dash in and out of our vegie patch. They are also a joy to watch and listen to as they have fun moving in and out of your garden plants.
More to come on our home which survived the bushfire even though we had not removed our shrub layer…
