Why scarecrows work

If so, I could not locate it. However, as I was about to give up and accept my ignorance, I came across this astonishing piece in the Times from last year, about facial recognition skills among crows in Seattle. Read it and tremble. With scarecrows being an age old bird control method, the question is, do they really work?

In the old times or even now , farmers use scare crows in the field to scare away the birds. Scare crows usually build in human shape and stand in the crop field as bird scares. Scarecrows are meant to frighten away crows from the crops, which is why they are often eerie and frightening. They are pseudo-human creations, which puts them in the same category as dolls.

They are symbols of death because they carry the reminder of the fear of starvation, if the crows eat the harvest.

The traditional scarecrow is a decoy made in the shape of a human. It is dressed in old clothes and placed in an open field to discourage crows, blackbirds and starlings from feeding on seeds and sprouting crops. But do they really work?

And in some cultures, scarecrows were actually live people, hired to shoo the birds away! In modern gardens, we most often see the typical stuffed human-shaped scarecrow, perhaps accompanied by an assortment of rubber snakes, owls, and foxes. Like deer and rabbits, birds are wary but adaptable. A basic scarecrow, placed in your garden and left alone, is likely only to be effective for a few days. So in order for your scarecrow to work, it needs to be ever changing.

You can accomplish this by:. You can make a basic human-shaped scarecrow from scraps you probably have lying around the house. Or how about making one of your own? Making a scarecrow Materials can be simple, but they should be sturdy. Remember that your scarecrow will need to stand up to the elements of sun, wind and rain. The frame can be a cross-shaped structure about 4 to 5 feet wide for the arm spread by 6 to 8 feet tall or whatever height you want your scarecrow to be.

Use your imagination and recycle some PVC pipe or a discarded garden trellis to create your frame. Fill an old flannel shirt and pants with straw, hay, grass clippings or plastic bags — whatever is available to make the body, arms and legs of your scarecrow. Be sure to cinch off the ankles and wrists of the clothing with garden twin to hold in the stuffing.