Tree Protector a Wildlife Danger?

[JackintheGreen]

My wife and I were taking a walk today through a small managed open copse when we both heard a faint scuffling sound. We stopped to listen and heard it again. After a moment we both realised that it seemd to be coming from a sapling protected by one of those square-section, opaque tubes. I looked down the top of the tube and found a Great Tit that had obviously dropped in. There is no way it would have got out without my help. The sides are too smooth to climb and it's too narrow to allow the bird to fly. I lifted the tube and it flew off to a nearby branch and seemed none the worse for its ordeal. I suppose it hadn't been in there long, but it was shear chance that we passed and heard its scufflings.

[Beekeeper]

Very well done, another little life saved.

Ian

[Susie]

It would have been good fertiliser.

[2dogs2000]

Originally Posted by Susie

It would have been good fertiliser.

Oh! How could you?

Anyway one little bird wouldn't provide much fertiliser.

[Susie]

It was said tongue in cheek.

I am glad that the little bird was rescued and was in good health but it if hadn't been then every little helps insofar as a growing tree is concerned although the flies would probably have got the best of it first.

Don't you just love nature, nothing is ever wasted.

[2dogs2000]

Originally Posted by Susie

It was said tongue in cheek.

I am glad that the little bird was rescued and was in good health but it if hadn't been then every little helps insofar as a growing tree is concerned although the flies would probably have got the best of it first.

Don't you just love nature, nothing is ever wasted.

I know you were only joking. As growing trees need all the help they can get I have told my family that when my time comes I want to be buried in a cardboard coffin beneath an oak tree. How's that for some fertiliser? Quite a few kilos I would say Better than a little bird.

[Susie]

I thought you did but you never can be too sure.

Hehe, same for me, but in my case I want my ashes spread under an oak.

[Johnny Redgate]

How did we ever manage to plant and grow trees before tree tubes were invented?

[Susie]

We ate more venison.

[Gill Catton]

I just hate that trees are planted and then abandoned and you end up with dense heavily shaded plantations over rank grassland with nettles that steadily becomes less rank (but no more interesting), something that would never happen in nature. No one seems to ever thin the trees.

I have also seen tree protectors that have killed the tree because ants build nests up inside the tube the nests become waterlogged in the winter and rot the wood.

And no one ever seems to remove the protectors and they're plastic so they just stay there forever.... horrible.... There's a lot wrong with the way we plant trees IMO......