Yes they only capture bugs on the fly. They also drink on the fly. When nest building they will land on the ground to gather twigs, mud and leaves. Since most fruit pests are flying insects they should help keep them under control. At least I am hoping so.
Martin’s start arriving in our area about April 15 and leave in late August so they are around during the bug season.
@figerama : You might consider inviting other birds to your property with nest boxes they like. I built two with a slot entrance 3/4" x 1 1/4" wide, if memory serves, which allowed swallows or chickadees in, but barred house sparrows from entering. Chickadees like a rather shallow box. I had built them with 5" deep interior & chickadees packed a solid inch of dog hair to the bottom before nesting. I have since learned swallows like 9" interior height. (5 x 5’ front to back, side to side.) I plan to build another for swallows.
If you could allow some space for a brush pile or weedy berm, that might attract other birds, snakes or toads to help with ground bound pests.
Bluebird family having a bad day (I assume a black rat snake) [taken about 10 minutes ago]. I may need to raise my birdhouses from my fenceposts onto a pole and put up baffles.
My parents have a ton of bluebirds nesting boxes and they all have those aluminum snake flanges on them. Same with their wood duck boxes, otherwise you’re just feeding the snakes. Those flanges (idk what they are actually called) really work at basically a 100% success rate.
Yeah, I need to do that. But since they are on fence posts, I’ll have to move them first (and I’m lazy, with other projects, so it will be a while before they’re moved/flanges added).
I don’t blame you that’s much more work than simply adding the flange
Speaking of bird families having a bad day, I spotted this neighborhood cat near the junco nest and took this photo before going to chase him off… too late, it was carnage. All five chicks were killed. I guess it’s time to mow the grass in that corner of the yard again.
I’m very biased in the dogs v cats field, but I loathe neighborhood cats that spend most of their time outside. If I just let my dog be in every neighbors yard whenever she wanted, pooping, chasing wildlife etc everyone would have an issue with that. Why do cats get a pass? Idk if you live with nearby neighbors I think it’s pretty rude to let your cats roam out of your yard.
Unfortunately there are at least five cats that come to our yard to use my garden beds as a litter box, probably because we are one of the only yards on the block without dogs. There are also a few stray cats in the area that have clipped ears (so have been fixed and released). I’ve tried motion sensor sprinklers for the cats, but they move so slowly and low to the ground that they don’t trigger them, and instead I just end up forgetting to turn them off before walking by and get sprayed myself.
I vote for a dog haha
Mine stays on “chase cats out of the yard duty” because she used to be on eat their poop duty. Once I mulched over all the sand they stopped pooping daily here
I live in a parallel universe (a wine & walnut county) where people feed neighbours’s cats so they would come to their yard rather than their own. The (slightly more efficient and hardly sustainable) alternative to feline rodent control would be to nuke the village…
Of course nobody wants their litter anywhere near their veg or in the same state… Some of the approaches that work (to a degree) are letting your dog mark the perimeter, letting your dog in and out of the garden irregularly, hissing at the cat (preferably without human audience 
) and spraying the cat - those make sure they are weary of you and yours - when they can see you. You may also employ a cat like my Boris The Animal (he’s earned the 
name) who will fight predators up to his own 7kg and keeps them off the property at night.
They can learn not to 
in your garden beds (Boris knows better), but they are vengeful on top of being smart… They need space to do their thing and they need it dry and sandy. So irrigation and any sort of mulch that is somewhat moist will send them off to bury their stuff elsewhere. I know people who’s dogs made friends with visiting cats so they just piled sand under some bushes somewhere further off and that was that.
One of the nice harbingers of climate change, the largest bee in Europe (3cm) - violet carpenter bee.
Unfortunately, the outdoor cats of Seattle have given up on this requirement, since there’s nowhere that stays dry through the rainy season. They dig in mud and wet wood chips even when I irrigate and mulch the garden beds. I looked out the window right after saying that and saw a cat digging in this wet, muddy, mulched garden bed, and came out just in time to chase him off mid-poop:
No thanks… I am not a fan of picking up dog poop, nor of adding “walking the dog” to my list of chores.
It beats picking up cat poop for me haha
But I don’t see taking care of the dog as any more a chore to taking care of the plants. Both are a pleasure for me, so if it would be a chore I agree to avoid it. She’s my exercise buddy so it’s just part of my routine
Oh I don’t pick up the cat poop lol, I just bury it better (the cats rarely actually bury it).
But just in general, a dog is harder to deal with than plants… the plants will be fine if I spend a week neglecting them, and they don’t need to be cared for very much when I go away for vacation… and if they get sick I can just throw them in the compost instead of dealing with doctors bills.
Haha fair
My condolences on the waterproof cats.
