How things have changed

[rary]

My youngest grandson was down yesterday and was standing far enough away that he didn't frighten the birds away from the feeders and asked what kind of birds were at the feeders, it was starlings, about 8 of them darting in and out from feeding, when I was his age there were a large number of starling all the time, but we then discussed how things are different now from when I was a boy, I explained one of the reasons I feed the birds is to encourage them into the garden where hopefully they will eat some insects that can damage my plants one bird I don't see that often nowadays is a thrush which ate the snails and of course the question came about what I do with the snails now, I tried to explain that there are some pellets that supposedly don't harm the birds or animals but I have discovered that some pellets are bad for worms so now rather than buying any chemicals I now use a garlic spray and different types of plants to deter the bugs, (marigolds) again I told him that when I was younger and was out playing on a bike, you always were hitting insects flying around, I remember (though some of you may not believe it) when there were very few cars on the road, nowadays you don't even see them on the windscreen or car fronts, so next year we will be trying to grow flowers which will encourage some insects and grow others where we want to detter them, nowadays there are a lot more double flowers than were available when I was a boy which doesn't help the insects so I have to hunt for plants that are decorative but insect friendly, any suggestions will be greatly welcome

[burnie]

I've had a similar conversation with my Grandkids as well, there are quite a few insects over here, possibly because there's less intensive agriculture. I stopped using slug pellets around 30 years or so ago, to protect the Thrushes and Hedgehogs from the poisons, sacrificing a couple of spare lettuce plants to save the crops I want seems a fair swap in return for the Song Thrush feeding in my garden during the summer, hearing the sound of snail shells being whacked on the path.