Birds, Birds, Birds
by
Clarence Rhodes
Maine Rose Society Member
July, 2003
About the last week of May and the first week of June I started to notice a problem with some of the buds on my roses. It appeared like some types of insects were eating the sepals. About a week or so before I started noticing the problems with the buds I had mulched the rose beds with some two-year-old shredded decomposed leaves. MY first thoughts were that some insects or caterpillars came from the compost.
I started examining the sepals and it appeared that they were being eaten horizontally. Sometimes one or two sepals were cut across, sometimes halfway around the bud, sometimes all the way around the bud. After examining them for a couple of weeks I came to the conclusion that the sepals were not being eaten, but being cut off somehow.
I contacted my friend, John Mattia in Orange, CT., and described my problem. He said that he had a similar condition but not as bad as mine. I had more than 100 buds with this condition. John contacted Baldo, the bug man, (Baldo Villegas) an entomologist for the State of California and e-mailed some pictures of his damage. Baldo could not give any definitive answer to what was causing it.
One morning I was looking out the kitchen window and saw a male gold finch destroying the rose buds. He would perch on top of the bud; pick the top of the bud between his feet, and then jump down on the brace and start pulling the sepals down from the top. Sometimes they would break off part way down and sometimes they would break off at the base. I watched him for about five minutes and he jumped around on about a dozen buds and did the same thing. I put up some of my rose bloom protectors throughout the beds and it did discourage the bird some. When the buds did open they looked like they had a severe case of the thrip.
About a month later there was a picture in the local daily newspaper showing a male gold finch playing “love me, love me not” with a yellow daisy. I mentioned this to my daughter and she told me that she watched a half-dozen male gold finches completely destroy her small patch of blue bells.
Right now I am trying to train some sparrows to hunt the Japanese beetles. Over the past years I have been squeezing the beetles and dropping them on the group. I would see the sparrows hunting around but did not know they were eating the Japanese beetles. This year I put up a platform and would put the squeezed beetles on it. Now I know definitely that the sparrows eat the beetles. The problem is that they cannot hover over the blooms to pick off the beetles. I may build some small perches and put them around the roses that attract the beetles the most and see if the sparrows can reach in and pick off the beetles. Will let you know if this approach is successful.
Copyright © Clarence Rhodes
Last Updated by Sari Hou, Oct. 27, 2003