[Marijke Jones]

Dear fellow gardeners,

The battle against the slugs and snails has begin again. I cleared the last of bushes away which was a damp shelter for them and put all I found in a bucket and killed them. I put slugclear granules around the most affected veggies but a few days ago I saw that magpies are picking up the white granules and eat them? Am I missing something here? Anyone else had this issue?

[Goosegirl]

I wonder if it's the bran in the pellets?

[KalisDad]

They got into my greenhouse in late winter and ripped open and devoured a bag of bird seed lol, they are smart and I would assume they wont eat anything that harms them, unlike me lol

[Blewit]

Maybe eating it for the grit content, birds need grit to grind their food.

[cc]

Maybe eating it for the grit content, birds need grit to grind their food.

All birds need grit "to grind" their food??

[missmoneypenny]

Definitely! I wrote about this in another post. Couldn’t work out why my pellets were disappearing overnight, noticed the ones under nets didn’t and finally put 2 and 2 together. They were white pellets so I have put blue ones down hoping they won’t identify that as food.

[Marijke Jones]

I think you’re right. The pellets they picked were white and now I used blue ones which are left alone. But I wonder why they don’t get sick from slug killer?

[missmoneypenny]

Well I hope they don’t get sick. The white ones ( and the blue) contain phosphate as the active ingredient, not metaldehyde which I think has been banned.

[cc]

I think you will find many birds don't need grit.

"ALL seed eating birds consume grit in one form or another regardless of whether they hull their seeds or not"

" pigeons and doves ingest seeds whole and seem to do fine without grit."

I think I will throw in parrots who hull the seeds themselves and owls!!