We had an Aunt whose garden was a scary place to poke round in as she had plastic snakes draped round to scare the birds from her garden. Even had them stuck under the eaves to keep the sparrows from getting in the roof.
Don't know if it worked for the birds, did for kids though.
Marion

I put lots of little sticks stuck in the ground around the seedlings to make a barrier. It looks silly but it protects them while they are young, and when the plants are bigger I remove the sticks.

Thank you both very much for your replies...

They are both great suggestions, and while the snakes might be a little tricky to track down - (rural town), the sticks I can do!

Again, many thanks for your help.

Why not get some of the soft anti-bird netting and cover the bed with it up on sticks. The black type is not very visible.
John

My problems mainly stem from an as yet uncontrolled yowie infestation. However, Uncle Remiggio has a passion for beverages made from grape juices and the vines he has growing next door to his ...house...are frequently attacked by many birds including bower birds, silver eyes and sparrows. Uncle Remmiggio has convinced the neighbour to try a number of devices to scare of the birds as follows. (a) Hanging large, phoney, reflective eyes from the branches. This seemed to work for a while but the birds eventually got used to it and gorged themselves on the grapes anyway. (b) Set up phoney eagles screeching devices. These emit pre-recorded eagle/hawk screeches all day. Again, the birds got used to them and some even seem to be lured towards them out of curiosity. Also, the noise is rather loud and annoying to humans. (c) The most successful was, believe it or not, fishing line. The lines are stretched fairly tighly around the garden away from human passageways. The fishing line is invisible or at least very difficult to focus on or judge distances with. The breeze simply vibrates on the lines emmitting a hum and whine which is not heard by humans but picked up by birds. They don't seem to like it. Anyway, give it a try, its only fishing line.

Thanks for the fishing line idea Dnnaa. I'll have to give that a try to see if it will keep the native birds away from my seedlings. My method of dealing with sparrows (noxious birds) though was an air rifle. ATB teddy,J

Hey there Teddy
Do they still have sparrow bounty in parts of Qld
I visited Mt Isa years ago and pulled out an Icecream container from the freezer marked sparrow heads.I thought someone was having a lend of me till i found out there was money in it.

just thought I'd drop in and give some feedback regarding my sparrow problem.

I tried the sticks (thanks Marie K), with limited success in baskets, but still had problems with seedlings in garden beds.

Then I tried dnnaa's suggestion using fishing line (thanks for that) - by tying lengths (approx 30cm) to one stick in the ground next to seedlings in garden beds, and tying lengths to the three chains of the baskets - with complete success. I now have FLOWERS growing on my healthy seedlings...

Thanks for taking the time to post your ideas...