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nw NC | Bird species here (crow, turkey, grackles) pull up seedling corn sprouts to get the seed. They leave the tiny corn plant laying beside where it was growing. The tiny plant will have two nearly parallel marks on opposite sides of the stalk where the bird grasped the plant with its beak. Easy to see the marks on freshly pulled plants. Rodent ( rats, mice , voles, tree squirrels, ground squirrels, etc.) damage does not have the parallel marks on the tiny stalk. Just a chewed into stalk and dug up crumbly soil particles at the hole where the seed is gone. I've never seen rodents eat the tiny corn plant sprout here but some rodents might eat the tiny plant in other parts of the country.
When corn begins to sprout here I have to make rounds of the field edges/tree lines early every morning scattering some shelled corn to feed the varmints of all types so they won't go into the fields and dig. Deer eat all the scattered shelled corn at night so I have to repeat the next day. Avipel seed treatment has helped a lot on birds pulling up corn sprouts. Also my home built "scare turkeys" have made turkey leery of coming within sight of where I put one.
 (Capture Turkey scare (full).JPG)
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 Capture Turkey scare (full).JPG (108KB - 33 downloads)
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What’s eating my corn
