Finding the right culprit

When vegetables show up half-eaten or go missing outright from my garden, I can pretty much assume that a woodchuck is to blame. When flowers disappear from the patio, I can be pretty sure that rabbits are responsible. When vegetation anywhere on my property gets seriously chewed down, I can pretty much assume that a deer (or two, or six) has helped itself to the foliage.

To be honest, I didn’t feel a need to think past those three “usual suspects.” Like many others who live in our beautiful Delaware Valley, I’ve caught enough woodchucks, rabbits, and deer in the act to be so, so sure of my assessments. I learned just recently, however, that I might be so, so wrong.

My certainty started to shift with an email I received a few weeks ago from reader Dale McCarter. McCarter wrote, “I had lunch with a friend recently and she was complaining about the deer eating her sedum. She showed me a picture and I told her I had an exact duplicate (see attached) and it is not deer. The sedum in the back of the house have been mowed down to sticks, and it is birds.” McCarter lives in Westtown Township, her friend in Thornbury.

McCarter went on to detail her own experience: “One time I saw seven little gray brown heads … at the same time. Interesting that they do not bother the plants in the front (yet!).”

Birds eating foliage? I didn’t doubt McCarter’s report, but his was a new one for me. I did a quick internet search to see what I could learn. On the Net I found story after story, all describing how small birds (finches, wrens, and unidentified others) were taking chunks out of the leaves of sedums, spineless cacti, and other succulents. After each lament was

COURTESY OF DALE MCCARTER