Wood pigeons

What you are looking at

A row of cabbages, sprouts or kale reduced to a set of bare white midribs and stalks standing in the ground. The leaf blade has been torn away and what is left looks skeletal, and it happened over a few days in the middle of winter.

Look for grey-white droppings on the plants and on the soil around them, and for torn rather than cut leaf edges. Pigeons pull rather than bite, so the damage is ragged.

It happens in daylight, which is unusual enough among garden pests to be a diagnosis on its own. Almost everything else on this site works at night.

In spring the same birds take pea and bean seedlings as they emerge, strip fat buds and blossom off fruit trees and currants, and later take cherries and soft fruit as they colour.

Why nothing except netting works

Wood pigeons are large, intelligent, numerous and hungry, and in a hard winter a brassica bed is the best food available for miles.

Every scaring device sold for them works on novelty. A hanging CD, a strip of foil, a plastic hawk, a humming line or a scarecrow produces a few days of caution and then becomes part of the scenery. Moving them regularly stretches that out. None of it holds a bed through February.

What does work is a physical barrier, and how it is fitted decides whether it works at all. A net lying directly on the plants is no obstacle, because a pigeon lands on it and feeds through the mesh. The net has to be held clear on a frame of hoops, canes or a permanent cage, and it has to be pulled taut and pegged at every edge.

That last part is also the safety requirement. Slack netting catches birds by the wing and traps hedgehogs, and it does so quietly. A taut net on a frame, walked past once a day, is both more effective against pigeons and far safer for everything else.

What to do about it

Build or buy a cage for the winter brassicas and net it properly, well clear of the foliage, taut and pegged down.

Put the netting on in autumn, before the first cold spell, rather than after the first damage.

Check it daily.

Group the winter brassicas in one bed at planning stage so one cage covers them.

Raise peas and beans under cover and plant them out at a decent size.

Use fleece or fine mesh over emerging rows and young transplants.

Cage soft fruit and cherries rather than draping netting over the bushes.

Use scarers as a supplement, move them often, and expect little.

What it gets mistaken for

Cabbage caterpillars chew holes through the blade and leave green-black frass pellets packed into the heart of the plant.

Slugs and snails rasp holes at night on low soft growth and leave slime trails.

Rabbits cut shoots cleanly at an angle and work at a consistent low height.

Deer tear foliage off well above rabbit height.

Wind damage shreds brassica leaves along the veins in an exposed position and leaves the midribs intact, which can look similar until you notice there are no droppings.

Frost damage on brassicas produces papery, bleached and blistered patches on leaves that are otherwise whole.