Crows digging up bulbs

Comic Book Guy

Hi all, I'm looking for help dealing with bloody crows.

Last autumn I planted a few hundred Daffodil, Crocus and Tulip bulbs either side of our driveway entrance to the house. Planted them in between and behind existing shrubs and rose bushes and covered everything with bark mulch for a tidy looking job.
It turned out really well with multitude of colours this spring.

However, the last couple of weeks the crows are playing holy hell with it :mad:

Arrived home one day and there was pecked and mashed up bulbs all over the tarmac with the shoots from them all chopped off and scattered everywhere.
Had no idea what happened but as I was working from home the next day I caught the culprits- about 30 crows digging and uprooting the bulbs.

A friend of mine had great success keeping them away from overhead wires near his house by using what is basically a beach ball with coloured concentric circles on it that supposed to replicate a predators eye.
It worked for about a day here before they paid so heed to it whatsoever and they have continued their daily attack.

Any ideas on what to try to keep them away?

Is it too late in the year now to try and replace all the bulbs they have destroyed?

Thanks!

The Continental Op

afaik its just one of those things crows do. Probably for amusement they are clever birds. There might even be the occasional grub or worm as an incentive.

Its late but not too late to plant at least Daffodil bulbs I have a great show of Tete-a-tete which was planted in January one year when Glambia were selling off bulbs at 25p a packet.

The problem is the bulbs won't have much time to get established, they will flower this year but will then take another year to fully recover.

The Red Ace

I remember growing up years ago the trick to stop them at the corn field was black sewing thread criss crossing over the corn, apparently they couldn’t see the thread and would get tangled up in it; might work for you with very little cost

kowloon

The Continental Op

I said they were clever but I didn't say they could read.

looksee

The pedant in me wonders how much counting was involved in making that nice neat fit of letters and spaces.