What birds and insects eat Colorado beetles

With every warm season appearing Colorado potato beetle fighting people have been around for decades using various methods and poison. During all this time, the pest has been able to adapt to many pesticidesthat the fight with him very often comes to a standstill. An alternative method of protecting potato plantations is to attract natural enemies of the insect to the territories planted with agricultural crops. About who eats the Colorado potato beetle, and will be discussed in this article.

Which bird eats the Colorado potato beetle

In abundance, the natural enemies of the Colorado potato beetle are on homeland pest, therefore, neither in South nor in Central America, representatives of this species pose a danger to the crop. The desire to adapt predatory insects, such as the bedbug picromerus and podizus in the vastness of our country, did not give the expected results. In this connection, many farmers began to involve poultry in this process. As a result, pheasants and turkeys coped with the task perfectly. It turned out that in addition to the guinea fowl eating Colorado beetles, gray partridges also like to feast on them.

Guinea fowl, proven as an effective parasite exterminator, pecked not only adults, but also insects in the larval stage. With pleasure they destroyed birds and egg-laying of pests of a bright protective color. Moreover, to search for the leaf beetle, they did not rake the soil in their paws, eating larvae and adults directly from the tops, without harming the green spaces.

On a note!

But it should be borne in mind that both turkeys and guinea fowl have the ability to fly, and therefore, wings for this purpose are usually cut for birds for this purpose.

No less productive, it turned out to be walking in the infield and pheasants. Besides Colorado potato beetle birds exterminated bear larvae and other garden pests. However, these beetle enemies in Russia are far from always tolerating our cold winters. On the territory of our country, the Colorado potato beetle eats cuckoos and hazel grouse, starlings and crows. Small birds such as sparrows do no worse. Although in some sources such information is not true. This fact is explained by the fact that very often birds take larvae for berries.

Some farmers have learned to teach even domestic chickens to eat insects by mixing bird food with pest larvae. After some time, the young bird began to perceive the insect as food both in appearance and in taste. And to get rid of pests, it was enough to release chickens between potato beds.

About fighter insects

In addition to birds, insects can also get rid of potato pests. The Colorado beetles feed on ladybugs, lacewings, sirfids, or as they are also called beetles.

Ladybugs act as a destroyer of the larvae and egg clutches of the leaf beetle. Due to their small size, lacewings and grubs are also not able to affect adults. But, despite this, they can significantly reduce the number of harmful insects during the formation of larvae.

However, it should be understood that it will not be possible to completely get rid of the Colorado potato beetles by attracting birds and insects to the potato fields, but it is quite possible to control their numbers within reasonable limits. It should also be borne in mind that “chemical artillery” is not used to combat the enemy, which is also an important advantage of this method of combat. And besides, natural enemies will cope with the pest much faster than doing it manually.