Topic: What won't wood pigeons eat!

[George the Pigman]

Like many suburban gardeners over the last 10-15 years I have been plagued on my allotment with wood pigeons eating anything they can get their beaks on. I seem to have to net most leaf vegetables but recently I have been wondering whether I have been overdoing it with some things. This leads me to ask you all what plants do you find wood pigeons eat and what ones do they leave alone. I find that they take any brassica - at least until the leaves are big and tough. Recently I have stopped netting peas as they don't seem to attack those. I am told spinach, spinach beet, beetroot and lettuce are also not favoured by our rapacious feathered friends.
What is everyone else's  experience?

[squeezyjohn]

I've found that something with teeth or a beak has eaten the following un-netted leaves on mine:

All brassicas
Onion stems
Parsley
Peas
Parsnips
Lettuce
Salsify & Scorzonera
Strawberries
Tobacco

Things left alone:
Carrots
Potato
Tomato
Garlic
Mint & other herbs
Beetroots
Swiss Chard
Beans

I'm sure I've left something out - but I suspect culprits are a mixture of pigeons, rabbits and deer with a smattering of rats and mice.

[galina]

I agree with John's list, but additionally mice/voles decapitate mature French beans an inch or two  above ground and they also nibble potatoes and beetroot and rabbits like carrot tops 

But at least the pigeons leave carrots and beans alone.  Here their damage is worst on brassica and peas.  Rather than full netting (which does get in the way and can be a palaver to take off and back on again at harvest time) I try and disrupt their flight path - they don't like stringy things and shiny, bangy things (like CD's or small flower pots on string hanging against pea supports or inverted bottles rattling on sticks).  My blood/fish/bone fertiliser came in sturdy plastic bags.  Not pretty but those fixed to tall pea supports with a foot of garden twine work well and they 'fly' at the slightest breeze.  Pigeons are a menace here too.

[George the Pigman]

Well today further chomping from our feathered friends (this time probably blackbirds and magpies as well as pigeons)! Nearly all my blackcurrants (4 bushes) and all my jostaberrys (1 bush) have been taken. The jostaberries weren't even ripe! I hadn't netting them as I haven't a fruit cage and just throwing a net over leads to awful problems picking the fruit and I lose more fruit. I was hoping that they may take some but not all of them as I had heard one well known TV/radio organic gardener say you shouldn't net just let them take the (small) amount they eat and accept the (small!) losses. Obviously he has more well mannered and less greedy birds.
Just netted my blueberries -they're not having those!!

[Digeroo]

Maybe not the pigeons but the deer gnaw my beetroot and carrots and they are very good are removing most kinds of netting.   

I also have lost my jostaberries but someone else has still got loads of them, not clear why they chose mind.

Shooed off 8 blackbirds from my red currants, but last year they hardly touched them.  Very odd.

Voles like the odd nibble at the courgettes.   

A couple of poundworld windmills seem to have done a good job for my strawberries. 

[George the Pigman]

Well at least we don't get deer (or rabbits) in suburban Birmingham. Although surprisingly we are now seeing moles for the first time.
The windmills sound a good idea! On our site there are a lot of them made out of old 2 litre pop bottles. They look quite natty. Must be some local school craft project!

[BarriedaleNick]

Kale seems to be left alone as does kohl Rabi.
Last year my enormous cherry tree produced maybe 100 lbs of cherries - difficult to know how much exactly as I let most folks take what they want.
This year I had two.  Cherries not pounds.  Two cherries and they weren't properly ripe.  Most of the tree was shredded by wood pigeons, magpies and blackbirds well before the fruit was even slightly ripe. 

It has been an odd year for fruit.  On the one hand I have never had so many raspberries, blackcurrants and strawberries and on the other - no cherries/redcurrants and the birds have been at all the fruit.  I can only assume that there is a lack of wild fruit for the birds to eat.

[grannyjanny]

We are gooseberryless thanks to the blighters.