The bane of blackbirds

Because I do not have wekas or pūkekos to complain about instead

November 2025

I mentioned in my post about the garden birds that the blackbirds here are very forward. They assume a "mi casa es su casa" approach to open doors, which results in cleaning up bird poo off the kitchen or bedroom floor on a regular basis. They are not native, but were brought over in the 1800s to make the new British immigrants feel more at home. They are very widespread and take the ecological niche that tīeke / saddlebacks once held.

Ivan, the original male blackbird who would lurk like an unfed labrador waiting for dropped morsels by the outdoor table, has been replaced by Bob, who got fed up with lurking and takes the seagull approach of straight up nicking your food. On my birthday the little what-name grabbed the plastic packet with the last jaffa cake in and flew it down to the stream. By the time I got down there from the deck, he'd made it inside the plastic and wolfed the whole thing down. For an English person, there is no greater crime than pilfering your last jaffa cake.

The blackbirds also dig the garden up. Or more specifically, they dig up the seedlings I've just spent weeks growing from seed so they shrivel up and die. I've lost all but two cornflower seedlings out of 15-16, and I've lost about a third of the cosmos seedlings. Because they are so small, I didn't have the same protective wool or coir surrounds I got for the perennials I was planting. Below is the same bought stock seedling dug up twice within two days. It didn't survive the second daylighting.

I do have some pop up domes and when I planted out the gaura seedlings, they went under them. Unfortunately, we are a high wind zone and the bracing on them just doesn't fare well against a bit of a blow. Instead of the joy of a growing garden bed, I have a hotch-potch of bird netting, old food covers and broken pop up domes to look upon. My latest protection attempt are metal hoops from the Warehouse that I've covered in bird-netting. I can only hope that in a few week's time, when the plants are bigger and more deeply rooted, I'll be able to take away the structures and get back to enjoying the garden.

Protecting the seedlings as best I can

I am not sure if the blackbirds are always this brazen or if it is to do with an extra mouth to feed. I have a good ear for baby birds, but I don't easily spot nests so the blackbird nest in the nikau palm took a while to find, just days before the little guys and gals fledged. Then I lost them for a time, but a female fledgling has made its home in our garden and its mum has been particularly brave in approaching me whilst gardening. The females have always been more circumspect than the males, but they both do the damage.

Blackbird nest in nikau palm

Obviously, I just need to keep on as I am and suck it up, but if you have any ingenious ways of keeping your young plants from being dug up, I am all ears. In the meantime, here's the cute female fledgling hanging out in the garden to enjoy.