Kitchen Garden Forum

I've just picked off about 30 cabbage white caterpillars off my kohl rabi leaves which are now in a covered jam jar and I'd like to save them for the birds by putting them on my bird table. As they move pretty quickly can anybody suggest how I can keep them alive on the bird table without them escaping? I'm assuming that the birds will eat them. I know there are some insects which birds avoid.

Hi Primrose,

I doubt that any self respecting bird will touch them. Any caterpillar that can afford to sit on the top of plants flaunting itself will be decidedly distasteful to birds

Wasps might take them for a meal.

The bird's won't eat them. They're profoundly distateful (I know, I've tried one). Which is why the Oompa Loompas went to work for Willy Wonka (not because I tried one, but because ... well, anyway, you get the idea).

FelixLeiter - you are right. I put them on the bird table and watched blackbirds, robins and blue tits completely ignore them. So before they could start crawling off it and back towards the vegetable patch again I collected them all up and flushed them down the loo. Couldn't bring myself to squash them. I felt bad about doing it, but would have felt even worse if my lovely healthy kohl rabi planted had been stripped of foliage within a couple of hours. It's unbelievable how quickly these creatures can chomp their way through tender leaves!

The colour of large white butterfly larvae are a deterrent to birds. i.e. Don't eat me, I taste awful/ am dangerous.

Killing the eggs and caterpillars is OK but can you kill the butterflies?

Geoff wrote:Killing the eggs and caterpillars is OK but can you kill the butterflies?

i can some new allotment holders must have thought i was nuts the other day, i had taken the nets of my brassica to weed and i saw a cabbage white land on one ,so there i was swearing and swinging my hoe about as they walked past