Green Parakeets have been visiting our garden all year. They first appeared last autumn eating the berries from our yew tree. I love to watch them BUT in the past couple of days they have totally destroyed my runner beans and french beans - eaten all the flowers and snapped the stalks. Has anyone else has problems with these birds? Any advice for next year please?
Hello and welcome I am assuming that you are in the South East of England as that is where there is a free population of them - I am near Staines and we get them quite a lot. The trick, we have found, is peanuts - - put up feeders, loaded with peanuts and they are generally too interested in those to attack your crops.
Welcome to the forum @ChickenStudio They are lovely to see, luckily they are not that prevalent here in Guildford. Good advice from @Fat Controller
A big flock of them roosts in the park near me and as you say they are fun to watch - I especially like to see them clambering around on the fencing of the football pitch as if it was a big gym frame! I am sorry about your runner beans. Think you can only do the same as for any other birds - protect the plants by netting them, or prevent the parakeets from settling by scaring them away. Somehow I doubt they would be deterred by a scarecrow or a plastic bird of prey - they always seem rather clever birds to me, like parrots - but something shiny that moves around might do the trick. Google and you will find lots of ideas for doing this by reworking and stringing up old CDs/ plastic bottles/ cans.
Thank you for your advice. I am in the Midlands and the Parakeets have only recently arrived here. I feed them in the garden but the problem is in our allotment (attached to the garden) and I didn’t think to feed them down there! I’ll give this a try. Thanks again.
My pleasure - we had a bit of a plague of them a few years back as they were breeding like mad along the Twickenham and Sunbury riversides as well as Bushey Park - we are only a few miles away at most hence they spread out and we got them here. They do also like fruit, so if you have somewhere flat you can split an apple and they will have a go at that - - but, be aware that will bring ants etc also, so you wouldn't want to leave it out too long. Sunflower seeds (big ones) are also liked by them too.
We have a plague of them! They pretty much took residence in our fruit trees last year and their claws wreck the bark too. No solution that I've found other than a blunderbuss! (Not really, they're protected birds even though a pest)
