Bird-proof basil cage

Lotsa birds want to have a go at my basils.

My basils (and a few other annuals) are planted into newly turned earth around the stump of an enormous birch, felled (I'm told) two years ago: we dug up the lawn for this bed.

(About that stump: ever wonder how, when people take down large old trees, they move from that place within a year or two? No? You should.)

And as that birch is dead, the jackdaws were digging up pieces of the roots for maggots. Which didn't help the basils any.

And the fieldfares like to dig deep holes in dirt, looking for worms - especially newly turned dirt, especially if it's been watered. Which also wasn't all that good for my tiny basils.

But the bird that got me to actually plant the fencing I'd bought earlier was the pheasant hen.

She thought my basil bed would make a dandy, well, bed. My poor basils!

So I put up my fence - green meshing, 50 and 60 cm tall, 5 m of each. That wouldn't deter the jackdaws and fieldfares, though - they'd just fly in. (Pheasants don't fly, as a rule. Remind me to tell you of the flying pheasant ...)

So I had read, a year or two ago, that they'd tried to keep gulls off one or the other dump by stringing string, thick enough to be visible to those birds - the idea being, birds live on their wings, they don't want to hurt them, they avoid strings. (It didn't work, but that was because it's very very difficult to string string across an enormous acreage.)

So I put in strings.

It works, except that fieldfare chicks hide in the tall grass behind the stump, get into the cage from underneath, and can't get back out again. Which means that their parents defy the strings and hop in to feed them. The chicks are easy to catch and easy to eject, but I'd hate to see them trapped in there for longer than a few hours.

Here's a pic:
Pic: A bird-proof cage for the basil. The larger plants next to the rain meter are perennials, planted there last year.

--
Related entry: Growing basil