Bird Watching: Birds that eat Japanese Beetles?, 1 by IrisLover79

IrisLover79 wrote:
I just saw my first (and hopefully my last) Japanese Beetle, yesterday. I've been reading up on them and found this in one of my Reader's Digest books (gotta love Reader's Digest, lol):

"Invite birds into the garden by minimizing use of any broad-spectrum pesticides and by installing a bird bath, small pond, or fountain. Robins, starlings, and flickers, with the long pointed beaks needed for poking into soil, help control Japanese beetles by eating the larvae. Other birds, including cardinals and catbirds, eat the adult beetles. Make sure that fresh water is always available, but empty your bird feeders; you'll keep the birds hungry enough to snack on the beetles and grubs."

We just recently added a "water feature" (haha) to our garden. It's actually a large mixing bowl. We dig a hole the size of the bowl and put it in the ground with only a little bit of the edge sticking up over the soil line. We had many birds before, but now we have TONS! Gunna be hard to empty the feeders, though. I'll wait until I see another JB, then I'll do it, heh.

Hope this helps, maddio and everyone else!
~Kris

[photo of our "water feature," lol]