Help Please With A Lawn Vandal!

[trt]

The past week I have been noticing small holes in my lawn, and the soil scattered around them.

I found the culprit and its a brown bird, and it pecks away like a woodpecker at the grass, apart from sitting in the garden all day, how can I stop it?

Its there now as I'm typing this.

[shoota]

The holes are probably leatherjackets and the bird will be eating them so best leave him to it.

[Hypognosis]

Size?
Starling (juveniles are brown)
Blackbird (females brown, juveniles brown but speckly)
Buzzard (they routinely search grassed areas for worms)

Green woodpecker would be a nice visitor but you didn't mention any green.

[shoota]

Symptoms



How to tell if leatherjackets are a problem in your garden;
•Lawns develop patches where the grasses turn yellowish brown and die. This can be distinguished from similar effects caused by lawn diseases or adverse growing conditions by lifting the affected turf and finding leatherjackets in the surface layers of the soil
•Another method to reveal leatherjackets in lawns is to soak it with water and covering it with material impervious to light, such as sacking or black polythene. The following day large numbers of grubs should be found on the surface under the cover
•Crows, magpies, rooks and starlings will search for leatherjackets in turf. These birds leave small round holes in the turf where they have inserted their beaks
•Leatherjackets have elongate tubular bodies, up to 30mm long, and are greyish brown. They have no legs or obvious head
•In flower beds or vegetable plots, seedlings and small plants are killed when the stems are damaged at soil level

[trt]

That ( leatherjackets) sounds about right, even though I have never heard of them before, as I do have yellow patches here and there.

Thanks for the info folks.

[dannyk13]

Wormcasts?

[trt]

Wormcasts? , is that another name for it danny?

[shoota]

No, a worm cast is the curly pile of 'stuff' that a worm excretes as it buries into the ground or sand.
http://www.pxleyes.com/images/contests/sand-2/fullsize/Worm-Cast-4ee1e046d7ee4_hires.jpg

[jomifl]

Leatherjackets are the larvae of crane flies or flying daddylonglegs.
http://apps.rhs.org.uk/Advice/ACEImages//RHS_SCN0006406leatherjackets_47463.JPG

[naomi24]

Scarecrow? A few children's windmills poked in the lawn? They cured my lawn of moles.

[trt]

I haven't got moles Naomi!!!!!