An important way to attract tits to the site is to install feeders and feed the birds in winter. Moreover, ordinary feeding tables are not very suitable for them. The fact is that a large number of different birds fly to them, including larger and stronger birds, such as crows, jackdaws, sparrows, etc., which drive away the tits and do not allow them to feed. The latter, even having grabbed food, are forced to fly away and peck at it in a secluded place, spending a lot of time on this. The rest of the birds peck at the feeder at this time and manage to eat most of the food placed there. Therefore, it is necessary to arrange special hanging feeders for tits, and use pieces of fresh meat as food, or even better - fat, lard, butter, or, in extreme cases, margarine, always unsalted. The most convenient way is to place them in a plastic or thread mesh, the kind they sell vegetables in in stores, and hang it on a string on a tree branch, this will be the feeder. Then you don’t have to worry that crows, magpies and any other birds will peck the food.
Apart from tits, none of them will sit on such a swinging structure. Moreover, the suspension should be carried out in such a way that it cannot be reached from the ground, for example by stray dogs. Through the holes in the mesh, tits will easily peck out food, at the same time it will not spill out, fall, get lost, or become covered with snow, i.e. may recur quite rarely (less than once a month).
Another way to feed can be to apply butter or margarine to the rough bark of trees, or you can also drip melted fat onto it. Then the birds will peck at the frozen crumbs of the product, clogged in the cracks of the bark. This feeding is also good because it stimulates a more active search for insects by tits. Although this is not so necessary, since they all have a remarkable property - even when they eat meat or lard, they never peck only at them, and, after eating at the feeder, they always fly to look for wintering pests. And they return only when they are hungry.
In winter in the forest, the main plant food for tits are pine and spruce seeds, but they are not suitable for feeding, because very expensive and difficult to obtain. Therefore, it is easier to feed tits with seeds of cultivated plants. It is best to use sunflower seeds for this, as the most affordable and easily purchased food; in addition, these can be the seeds of most oilseeds, as well as pumpkins (all of which should not be fried), oats, various cereals, white bread crumbs, etc.
Advantages of plant food: it does not spoil during thaws, its inferiority (for tits) forces them to search for insects, in addition, such food is cheaper, easier to purchase, longer and easier to store. Moreover, if the sunflower seed is slightly open, then the tit with its thin, tweezer-like beak easily drains the contents through this gap, eating it almost completely. But she cannot open the whole achene, so she hollows it out from the side. As a result, the contents are only partially eaten away - opposite the hole made, no more than 1/2-2/3 of the seed. At both ends of it there remains quite a lot of food that disappears. As a result, the food is not fully used, not rationally, and the tits spend a lot of effort trying to get it. This can be judged by the time they eat seeds of varying degrees of purification. So a tit eats a peeled sunflower seed, on average, in 1.5 minutes. Not peeled, but opened - in 2.5, and whole, with the husk intact - in 3.5-4 minutes, and then, as already said, not completely. It is interesting that they do not choose peeled seeds from the total mass of unpeeled ones, but grab the first one they come across, whatever is closest.
From all that has been said, it follows that before giving sunflower seeds to tits, they should be prepared first. A small amount of them can be pre-crushed by scattering them on a hard, flat surface and rolling them with a rolling pin or bottle. And if you rarely visit the feeder, and you pour a large mass of seeds there at once, then it’s easier to pass them through a meat grinder. In this case, the main part of the seeds will be peeled, and the smaller part will be crushed. As a result, tits easily peck at such food. The husks need not be winnowed. At one time, the titmouse eats no more than 3-5 seeds, after which it flies off in search of another, usually animal food, and returns to the feeder only when hungry, no earlier than after 30-40 minutes, or even after several hours.
As already mentioned, table feeders are not suitable for feeding them. Even having grabbed a seed from it, the tit does not eat the last one, but flies away to a secluded place, where, holding it between its legs, it pecks it. All this takes a lot of time. And when she returns for the next one, the feeder is usually already empty. In addition, according to our observations, contrary to popular belief, the great tit, in certain cases, does not always see well.
She obviously sees large objects (bushes, trees, etc.) perfectly. The same can be said about distances comparable to the size of her body - here her eyes probably act like a magnifying glass, and she is able to discern even clutches of small insect eggs. But at distances that are average for her, from 20 to 150 cm, she does not see very well, in any case, worse than a person. Especially if the objects are black (in our case, sunflower seeds) scattered across the dark (in the experiment, blue) background of the feeder. Nevertheless, they were recognized by people from a distance of 1.5-2 m. But the birds practically did not notice them even from 20-30 cm, and only when they came close to them did they begin to peck. At the same time, they saw the same seeds on a light background, or vice versa, light crumbs on a dark one, well. Thus, they clearly saw sunflower seeds on a light gray surface from 1.5 m away.
Obviously, when searching for food, the contrast between the color of the food and the background on which it is located plays an important role. It is also possible that tits do not distinguish blue well; they probably do not really need it in life. Hence the conclusion - the food and the feeder should be different, contrasting colors. Then tits find them easier on their first visits. However, this is not of decisive importance. As soon as the birds establish that there is always food in some place, and they do this quickly enough, they begin to visit there regularly, completely regardless of the color of the feeder. To get rid of competition from other, less useful birds, tits should be made of a special design.
This does not mean that other birds should not be fed, for example sparrows; they are also useful for the garden, especially in summer, because they feed their chicks with insects. But if you choose between them and tits, then preference, of course, should be given to the latter. They will bring much more benefits. Therefore, feeders should be made in such a way that tits can primarily use them.
Boxes of dairy products and juices are well suited for making them, but even better are transparent plastic bottles for lemonade, beer and other drinks, 1.5-2 liters in volume. In each such feeder, not one, but several flight holes (usually 2-4), with a diameter of 3.5-4.5 cm, are made. After that, the latter are hung freely on a string on tree branches, similar to the nets with fat or meat described above. Crows cannot get through them, but sparrows and other small birds, being more careful, stay away. It is better to make holes at 1/2 the height of the bottle, and fill the food no higher than 2 cm from the bottom edge of the bottle. Being quite voluminous, such feeders require “refueling” no more than 2-3 times a winter. When organizing feeding, keep in mind that the most difficult month for birds is February.
As soon as the tits settle down on your site, most of your worries about protecting your garden and vegetable garden from insects will disappear. True, there will still be problems in the fight against slugs and partly other nocturnal pests, but for this there are toads, bats and our other nocturnal helpers, which are also useful to take care of.
V. Starostin,
Ph.D. agricultural sciences
Newspaper "GARDENER" No. 44, 2011.

Birds in the garden are not just eaten berries on the trees, as many people believe. Most of the feathered guests in our gardens are insectivorous birds. Birds are the best cleaners of the garden, vegetable garden and fields from insects, bugs, and caterpillars that are trying to eat our harvest. Let's get acquainted with birds native to forests, fields and meadows that help in caring for our gardens and vegetable gardens.

In fact, there are a lot of such helpers. Even sparrows, which many scold for eating cherries, are of great benefit. And how nice it is to hear birds singing... Surely it is their songs that awaken nature and us from winter hibernation.

The main benefit of birds is that they eat a huge number of insect pests. Of course, they cannot cope with all of them, but those insects that survived are no longer so terrible for the garden. You might have seen birds such as starlings, flycatchers, swallows, wagtails, and redstarts in your garden. These birds are already accustomed to people, and we are accustomed to them.

How do birds eat? Where do they collect their food? Every gardener should know that insectivorous birds, based on the place they “search” for food for themselves and for their chicks, are divided into 3 groups:

1 group of birds - finches, buntings, thrushes, rooks, jackdaws, redstarts - collects its food mainly in the upper layers of the soil and on the surface of the soil, as well as in the grass.
The 2nd group of birds - wrens, warblers and morning dawns - chose to collect food on the branches of bushes.
Group 3 of birds - goldfinches, tits, orioles, warblers - chose trees to search for food.
But I would also highlight the 4th and 5th groups. I would classify the ubiquitous sparrows as 4th, because they collect food for themselves and their chicks everywhere.

Well, in the 5th category I would include swallows, which catch insects on the fly, which also brings great benefits to gardens. But when it rains, the swallows have to starve, because insects do not want to fly at this time. By the way, this probably explains the sign that if swallows fly low, it means rain. Insects probably sense that rain is approaching and accordingly fly low in order to hide in time. Well, swallows have no choice but to fly lower. If you want to eat, know how to move, it's called...

In the warm season, birds have enough food, but in winter they need to be fed. Birds also love water. They need it both for drinking and for bathing. There are different water bowls and bird baths, and by making them, you will not only help the birds, but also your garden.

Many of these birds love both animal and plant foods, but feed their chicks exclusively with animal food. I want to talk a little about the most popular garden helpers.

Sparrows.
Why did I start from these destroyers of cherry orchards? Namely, to show that they are actually very useful and so that you also treat them with respect. Imagine how sparrows have to work, feeding their 4-5 chicks at a time. And during the season they hatch chicks 2-3 times. And the chicks are not simple, but voracious. The sparrow has to fly up to the nest with food for the babies about 300 times a day, and each time it is either an insect or a caterpillar.

If in the spring you see sparrows picking at the flowers of an apple tree, then do not drive them away. You can say they are doing you a great favor, because the sparrows pick out the apple flower beetles from there.

Yes, you could see flocks of sparrows working in gardens and fields in the second half of summer. It looks like they will eat the entire harvest. The Chinese thought so at one time. Their government decided that the sparrows were actually eating them. Well, what do they do with pests? Usually they try to destroy. So the authorities decided to get rid of the sparrows, which did a huge favor for the real pests of the fields. The harmful insects multiplied so much that the Chinese had no choice but to bring sparrows from neighboring countries. So don’t repeat the mistakes of the Chinese, don’t drive the sparrows away from your garden. Yes, you can scare them with a garden scarecrow, but under no circumstances destroy the helper sparrows.

But tits are birds that do not cause any harm to gardens at all. Tits are primarily insectivorous birds and only occasionally feed on certain seeds. They love to look for food on the branches of garden trees, and collect pests at various stages of their development. Tits collect eggs and larvae of pests, as well as adult pests of garden trees. This bird also copes well with codling moth caterpillars. During the summer, one pair of tits can clear almost 40 apple trees from pests.

The tit hatches chicks 2 times per season and often there are about 7 chicks at a time, or even more. To feed the chicks, the tit has to fly to the nest with food 400 times during the day.

Starlings are migratory forest birds, but they liked living in birdhouses so much that they happily settle in our gardens. Starlings mainly look for their food on the surface of the ground and only sometimes in trees. Therefore, they can be classified as the first group of birds. Starlings eat various larvae, and they catch them so quickly that the larvae rarely manage to hide. These birds lay eggs 2 times per season. Their chicks are also quite voracious, like those of tits and sparrows.

Rooks.
Rooks like to settle closer to people, although by nature they are forest birds. They eat mainly insects and their larvae, most of which are pests. They catch both beetles and wireworms. If you see a rook picking at the ground in a field or garden, do not drive it away. At this time, he can look for another pest. A pair of rooks brings 40-60 grams of various insects to their chicks every day. By the way, rooks can even eat a vole, because they are not small birds at all.

Swallows.

Swallows eat various insects that fly. These birds catch horseflies, flies, mosquitoes, small beetles, butterflies and even flying aphids in flight. The same food is fed to the chicks.

Other birds also provide great benefits to our gardens. But our feathered helpers don’t want to eat the Colorado potato beetle.

Different birds feed their chicks at different times, so almost throughout the entire season your garden is under reliable feathered protection. Why should you buy any chemicals to kill insects if there are such wonderful helpers as insectivorous birds?

What other benefits do birds have in the garden? I think everyone will agree with me that it is very pleasant to listen to birds singing. But it turns out that we are not the only ones who love their singing. Plants are also not indifferent to the beautiful songs of birds and grow better when doing so.

As you can see, insectivorous birds are very important for our gardens. And in cities they are also useful, otherwise we would not be able to breathe at all from all kinds of mosquitoes and flies. I hope that you will not use various chemicals in your garden to kill insects, because in this case our feathered friends may also suffer. It’s better, on the contrary, do everything to attract birds to the garden and let their beautiful singing delight you every day. I will talk about what you need to attract birds in the following articles.

Have a healthy and singing garden!

Development of a lesson on the topic:

"Unnoticed Harvest Protectors"

The world around us, 4th grade

Educational and educational complex "School of Russia"

Section “Native land - part of a big country”

Lesson 12

The purpose of the lesson: introduce the protectors and pests of cultivated plants.

Tasks:

Educational objectives :

Introduce students to animals that damage crop plants, as well as measures to protect crops;

Formation of the ability to create food chains;

Formation and expansion of the concept of “ecological balance”;

Enrichment of vocabulary.

Developmental tasks :

Continue to develop the ability to compare, establish cause-and-effect relationships, and develop the ability to convert information into various forms.

Development of students' speech;

Development of fluent, conscious reading skills;

Development of the ability to analyze, compare, generalize, and draw conclusions.

Educational tasks :

Foster a love of nature and develop a sense of responsibility;

Foster a caring attitude towards nature.

Equipment: computer, blackboard, multimedia projector, fishbone blank cards, survey cards, felt-tip pens, student manual “Green Pages” and atlas - key “From Earth to Sky” by A.A. Pleshakova.

During the classes

Organizing time.

Formulation of the problem.

Read the text. Find errors in it and write them down. Draw the correct answer. ( Game "Draw the answer")Text appears on the slide.

As you leave the village, you see vast spaces sown with cultivated plants such as rye, wheat, oats, potatoes, and buckwheat. Tall, thick rye is a forest of its own. Birds and animals live here. Here is a kestrel flying over the rye. All day long she is busy flying over the fields, looking for moles and destroying them in large numbers. Here the buzzard caught the gopher. The sun has long since set, the short summer dawn is fading, some shadows are visible over the rye. These sparrows flew out to hunt. They will catch mice all night long. Their work is difficult.
But in the rye there live many small animals that are worse than rodents. These are insects - pests of the field: slugs, aphids, Colorado potato beetles, caterpillars. However, there are also friends who take care of the fields. These are starlings, tits, barn owls.

(Errors: mole - mouse, sparrows - owls.)

How are these animals related? ( Owls eat mice)

What about mice? ( they feed on plant parts) Find in the text the answer to the question: what does the mouse eat in the fields? ( rye, wheat, oats, potatoes, buckwheat) What plants does it destroy? ( cultural) Why is that bad? ( the amount of harvest is reduced) Conclusion: which of the drawn animals is a pest and which is a protector? ( children's answers)

Communicating the topic and purpose of the lesson.

Today we have a dating lesson. We learn about the animals that get part of the crop grown by humans and about their enemies - the defenders of the crop.

2. Updating knowledge.

List the main branches of crop production. (O children's answers)

Explain the concept of “ecological balance”, what is it? (O children's answers)

3. Checking homework.

Frontal work with the class.

1) Solve the crossword puzzle "Crop production".

Children have cards on their desks. We add the answers to the crossword puzzle after a group discussion. ( Annex 1 )

For individual students, individual task cards. (Appendix 5)

Questions for the crossword:

A heat-loving plant, sometimes grown for silage.

Field crops are popularly called “second bread”.

From the grains of this plant, millet is obtained.

A round vegetable that turns red in autumn.

Buckwheat porridge is cooked from the grains of this plant.

Loaves and buns are baked from flour obtained from the grains of this plant.

This plant is a relative of wild strawberries.

A small bitter vegetable with antimicrobial properties.

This plant blooms in July, and when grown in a greenhouse - in early March. Varieties: ... - grass, ... Fischer.

A field plant from whose grains flour is made.

The field plant is a delicacy for horses.

The plant, which got its name from the Persian word “turban”, is a turban, the pride of flower growers.

A plant with large yellow fruits.

The fruits of this shrub are black and red.

(Answers: 1.Corn. 2. Potatoes. 3. Millet. 4. Tomatoes. 5. Buckwheat. 6. Wheat. 7. Victoria. 8. Garlic. 9. Cloves. 10. Rye. 11. Gladiolus. 12. Oats. 13. Tulip. 14. Pumpkin. 15. Currants. Keyword: PLANT CULTIVATION.)

2) Individual work using cards.

Write what a person gets from these plants: flax, wheat, rye, cotton.

What is crop production? How is crop production related to industry?

Fill out the diagram and add 2-3 plants for each branch of crop production:

Indicate the extra word on each line.
a) millet, oats, peas, barley;
b) cucumber, zucchini, garlic, cherry;
c) pear, apricot, buckwheat, currant;
d) cabbage, lily, iris, phlox.

4. Work on a new topic: “Unnoticed protectors of the harvest.”

Name the guessed plants that are grown by field farmers and vegetable growers.

Field farmers grow corn, potatoes, millet, buckwheat, rye, oats, and wheat;

Vegetable growers - tomatoes, garlic, pumpkin;

Imagine a field of potatoes. The slide appears:

What's happened? The slide changes:

What happens when the beetles eat all the leaves? ( the tubers will no longer receive air and nutrients. Harmful)

Do you think there are still pests? ( Yes)

Let's watch the video.

Watch the video from 08/13/10 (Due to the heat, a huge number of voracious pests have grown in North Ossetia)

What is the video saying? ( pests destroy crops) What pest are they talking about? ( cotton sofa) What losses did agriculture suffer? ( about 80% of the harvest)

Student: In pre-revolutionary Russia, with its backward, monoculture agriculture, damage caused by agricultural pests often became catastrophic. Farming losses from harmful insects alone amounted to about 980 million rubles. per year, while field farming lost about 10% of its gross output, gardening - 20, and horticulture - even 40%. Enormous devastation was caused in field farming by locusts, bugs, grain beetles, Hessian flies, fall armyworms, meadow moths, beet weevils, and harmful rodents, and in gardening by apple moths and codling moths.

Pests cause damage to agriculture. To find out which ones, we will fill out the “FISHBON” diagram. We will work in pairs. You will need markers or colored pens. Children take a card with a table.

1) Find a rectangle at the bottom of your sheet. ( the tail of our fish) Think and write down what can affect the quality and quantity of the crop harvested in the fields of the country.

Children write down the answers. Discussion of recorded phrases: drought, excessive waterlogging of the soil due to precipitation, damage from insects and mice, pesticides.

Let's find out who can cause harm. To do this, take cards with the text “Who gets part of the harvest?” (app2) In the “fishbone” table, at the top of each line we write the name of the pest, below - which plant it causes harm.

Children fill out the left part. Sample answers from children: Colorado potato beetle; aphid – sucks juice from plant leaves; codling moth – apple seeds; rodents - eat part of the crop.

Discussion. When checking, show pictures of pests. Fill in the “fishbone” drawn on the board.

Children receive assignments in rows. The content is retold by 1-2 strong students.

For 1 row– a manual for students “Green Pages” by A.A. Pleshakov on p. 118. Let's get acquainted with the text about the Colorado potato beetle.

(about 1 cm long) feeds on potato leaves. In the grass you can find a rounded bug up to 7 mm long, which shimmers like a precious stone. This is a magnificent leaf beetle.

They settle on many cultivated plants aphids. They suck out plant juices. This causes the leaves to curl and often dry out completely.

Everyone came across a wormy apple. But it was not a worm that got into it, but the caterpillar of a small gray butterfly, the codling moth. These caterpillars bore into apples and eat the seeds inside them. Having damaged one apple, the caterpillar crawls to another.

For 2 and 3 rows: atlas-determinant “From earth to sky” by A.A. Pleshakova on page 191. Let's get acquainted with the text about rodents: wood mouse, field mouse, vole.

Mice are small rodents with long tails. Their sharp teeth are constantly growing, so the mouse must constantly chew on something to keep the teeth worn down and not grow too long. There are many species of wild mice in the world.

2) Physical education minute.

The flower was sleeping and suddenly woke up, ( body right, left)
I didn't want to sleep anymore. ( body forward, backward)
He moved, stretched, ( hands up, stretch)
He soared up and flew. ( hands up, left, right)
The sun will just wake up in the morning -
The butterfly circles and curls. ( spin around)

3) Now let's fill in the right side of the diagram. On the left of the diagram we have written down pests - one of the reasons for crop loss. What do you think we will write on the right side? ( assistants) Turn your cards over and find the text "Who helps us." (application 3) Let's fill out the diagram.

Sample answers from children: ground beetles - eat Colorado potato beetles; ladybug - eats aphids; lacewing - aphid; insectivorous birds: starlings, tits, pied flycatchers - codling moth caterpillars; birds of prey: owl, kestrel, buzzard - rodents.

When checking, show images of crop protectors and fill in the “fishbone” on the right side of the board.

Children receive a task based on options. The content is retold by 1-2 strong students.

- 1 option: manual for students “Green Pages” by A.A. Pleshakov p. 124, get acquainted with the text about ladybugs;
Option 2: p.102, get acquainted with the text about lacewings.
- Option 3: Atlas-determinant “From earth to sky” by A.A. Pleshakov p.186, we get acquainted with the text about birds: barn owl, kestrel, buzzard, owl.
Option 4: Page 172, get acquainted with the text about tits;
Option 5: p. 180, get acquainted with the text about starlings,
Option 6: p.182, get acquainted with the text about the pied flycatcher.

Ladybug feeds on aphids. During her life she eats about four thousand of them. The ladybug larva is also a predator. She eats about a thousand aphids in her life.

Scientists have done this experiment. We fenced off an area in a potato field with film where there were 70 Colorado potato beetle larvae. They let 5 predators in there ground beetles. A few days later, all the larvae were eaten by ground beetles...

Lacewings very beautiful. Light, delicate, with lacy bluish-green wings, they look like small dragonflies. And their eyes, like golden beads, sparkle in the sun. The lacewing larvae have huge jaws compared to their bodies. With the help of these jaws the larvae eat aphids.

Nocturnal predators are different owls. During the day they can sometimes be seen sitting in trees. Most often found in forests and parks tawny owl Its height is 40-45 cm, and its wingspan is about 1 m. Long eared owl a little smaller. On her head, “ears” made of feathers are clearly visible. Less Tawny Owl and a barn owl. It is rare. This owl’s “face” is not round, like other owls, but very special - heart-shaped. During the day, the barn owl sits somewhere in the attic or in a hollow tree, and at night it flies out to hunt.

The main food of owls is rodents.

Over a meadow or field you can sometimes see a small, jackdaw-sized, red bird hovering in the air. You can hear her ringing voice: “kiki-ki.” This kestrel. She looks out for rodents, her main prey.

Sometimes in a field or on the edge of a forest you will notice a larger bird, which circles above the ground for a long time, emitting a nasal drawn-out cry: “kya-ya-ya - kya-ya - kya-ya-ya.”

As if he was plaintively begging for something, whining. This bird is called - buzzard. Its main prey is also rodents. Like the kestrel, the buzzard can hover above the ground, fluttering its wings and looking for prey.

The buzzard reaches a length of 50 cm, and a wingspan of 1 m. In central Russia, it is considered the most common representative of large birds of prey, that is, it is found more often than others.

Kestrel and buzzard are diurnal predators.

Tits.

Starling- a black bird with a metallic sheen and silver streaks. Starlings can be seen in trees or on some lawn, where they walk around collecting food.

The Pied Flycatcher is a small bird that resembles a magpie in its coloring. Contrary to its name, it feeds mainly on caterpillars and spiders.

4) Consider our diagrams. What is “hidden” there?

Children's answer: power circuit.

List the power circuits. Well done! Which part of the table do we have left unfilled?( conclusions)

In the conclusion we will write down what needs to be done to save the harvest without harming the environment. Children write down their findings independently.

Let’s compare our conclusions with the text in the textbook p. 211 “How to take care of them?”

Sample answers from children: use less pesticides; create conditions for “helpers” - make feeders, birdhouses, titmouses; place poles with a crossbar - perches; do not kill ground beetles, lacewings.

Well done. Explain how pesticides harm the environment? ( accumulate in the soil and enter plants through the root system, then into our food. Beneficial insects and birds may be poisoned)

We learned about crop pests and their enemies. So let's be attentive to our helpers, let's protect them!

5. Consolidation of what has been learned.

Let's summarize the lesson. (testing)

Take cards with texts. There is a Question and Answer sign below. Let's fill it out. I read the question, you choose the answer on the slide, mark the correct one. ( Only answers appear on the slides)

1. Which insect larvae are not predators?

Codling moth

Ladybug

Lacewings

2. How do aphids harm plants?

Gnaws leaves

Sucks plant juice

Gnawing on plant roots

3. How does a person harm his friends – animals in the wild?

Scares them

Doesn't feed them

Poisons with pesticides

4. Continue the food chain: grain crops - field mice - ...

Starling

Kestrel

Tit

5. The enemies of aphids are:

Lacewings

Buzzards

tits

Let's compare our answers:

6. Summing up. Giving marks for work on individual cards and work in class.

Reflection:

I learned…

I learned new words, terms...

I met...

I find it difficult …

7. Homework.

Page 208 – 213, retelling. Answer the “Test yourself” questions. Complete task 3. ( for all students)

Come up with and draw a special sign for the rules of behavior in nature.

(For example: don't kill ground beetles; don't catch insects! Optional)

For strong students, or for a group of students: prepare mini-books in which you talk about other crop pests ( Example: locusts) and ways to combat them, complete on sheet A-4.( during recess, discuss with those who want to do this type of work a template for completing a baby book) For the next lesson we are preparing a project “Pests and protectors of the crop”

Under natural conditions, constant mass invasions of any pest are quite rare. This is due to the fact that the natural plant community itself regulates the number and type of its inhabitants and the processes occurring in it. Where a large number of herbivorous insects appear, the number of predator insects that feed on them also increases. If there are more predators and there is not enough food for everyone, some of them move to other places, the rest simply die. This is how natural balance is restored. In a garden, especially a young one, there is usually no such balance, hence outbreaks of various pests. Mass destruction of garden pests using all kinds of chemicals leads to the death of the beneficial insects that feed on them. In this case, the natural balance is irreversibly disrupted.
To restore natural balance, you should attract the natural enemies of your garden pests to the site. Unlike pesticides, beneficial animals are harmless to the environment, as a result of which their attraction is a justifiable step not only from an environmental, but also from an economic point of view.

Beneficial insects

Helpful spiders

In the gardens of the European part of Russia there are over 25 species of spiders, which are ferocious and very voracious predators. Spiders destroy a huge number of insects, clearing the garden of pests and maintaining its natural balance. Some of them catch up to 500 insects per day with their nets, so you should carefully protect the web on outbuildings, trees and fences. In addition, spiders are an integral part of the food chain, since they, by consuming small pests, themselves provide food for many birds.

Useful pliers

Along with herbivorous species of mites, predatory mites are very often found in gardens. Together with mites that feed on plants and fungi, they form a stable system.
Phytoseiids are the most effective predators. Female mites lay eggs on the undersurface of plant leaves, but do not cause any harm. The hatched larvae begin to actively feed on spider mite larvae and perfectly protect plants: one larva can eat 30 spider mite larvae in 10 days.
When spider mites are absent, phytoseiids actively feed on the mycelium and conidia of powdery mildew, which also helps protect the plantings.
Hemisarcoptid mites feed on scale insect eggs located under the shield. The population of these mites in a favorable year can destroy up to 35% of the scale insect population in plantings.
Stigmeid mites are very useful in the garden - they feed not only on larvae, but also on adult spider mites, and also attack various types of flat beetles and feed on the eggs of mites that damage fruit crops. During its life, one such mite can destroy up to 80 apple mite eggs and thereby effectively limit its number.
In the last 50 years, the use of polytoxic pesticides has led to a disruption of the natural balance, as a result of which harmful mites began to predominate in gardens, and the number of acariphagous mites (eaters of harmful mites) has decreased.

Beneficial worms

Beneficial amphibians

Active protectors of the crop are toads and frogs. It is important that they exterminate even those pests that birds “disdain.” In addition, they usually hunt at dusk or at night, when most pests come out of their hiding places. Toads and frogs eat slugs, snails, butterfly larvae and caterpillars, centipedes and many other insects. Amphibians feed on animal food, so accusations of eating garden strawberries are completely unfounded. It occasionally happens that toads, in the heat of the hunt for a slug sitting on a berry, can accidentally bite off a piece of the berry along with the pest - these are the cases that give rise to the myths about the omnivorous nature of these useful animals. In fact, plant food is not even absorbed in their digestive system, so there is no reason for them to eat the plantings.
Amphibians are attracted to the site by small ponds and damp, low canopies, therefore, if there is no pond near your site or at least a ditch with water where frogs could live, you should organize such a place in the garden and bring the first inhabitants.

Beneficial reptiles

Among the reptiles found in gardens and vegetable gardens, the most common are lizards and snakes. All types of lizards living in our country (fast, medium, legless spindle lizard, etc.) are not only safe for humans, but also bring great benefits. Lizards feed mainly on invertebrate animals - worms, mollusks, spiders, centipedes, insects. The lizards' menu includes many different pests. Lizards eat mole crickets, various beetles, flies, caterpillars, and even, if they are very hungry, Colorado potato beetles. Depending on the habitat, the diet of lizards consists of 35-98% of harmful insects and their larvae. Lizards eat quite a lot and in terms of the intensity of destruction of garden, vegetable or forest pests they are almost as good as many useful birds.
Snakes in the garden are, as a rule, unwelcome guests - there are too many fears associated with these animals. Most often in the garden you can find snakes such as snakes, snakes (relatives of the snake) and vipers. Snakes are easily distinguished from vipers by two bright orange spots behind their eyes. Snakes are blue-black in color, while vipers are black and light brown-gray. Contrary to popular belief, snakes and snakes are not at all poisonous, and vipers practically do not attack people - only if they are stepped on or otherwise provoked.
But benefits of snakes on the site is huge: they exterminate various rodents, hunt moles, etc.
The favorite habitats of snakes are stumps, bushes, compost pits, manure heaps, or accumulations of various garden rubbish. The more littered the area, the more snakes there will be - but, of course, their number should not exceed reasonable limits, especially if they are vipers.

Helpful birds

Birds play a key role in reducing caterpillar populations. The division of songbirds according to the type of food into granivores and insectivores is very arbitrary: granivorous birds need various animal feeds, and many insectivores willingly eat berries and plant seeds. Granivorous birds feed their chicks with insects and feed on them themselves at this time. Tits, nuthatches, flycatchers, blue tits, sparrows, wagtails, pikas, redstarts and other birds, feeding on various insects, destroy a large number of pests.
An old well-known way to attract birds is to install houses, feeders and drinkers. When visiting, the birds will also dine on pests.
Domestic chickens are successfully used in the fight against harmful insects. When grazing agricultural fields, it was found that one chicken can eat more than 1,000 pest bugs in a day.
A good way to prevent the appearance of rodents on your site is to graze poultry in flower beds in the fall. The fact is that mice and voles are attracted to seeds that fall onto the soil in the fall. By releasing the chickens into the flower garden for a couple of hours, you can “clean up” the garden naturally.

Useful animals

Many wild mammals can also become your assistants on the site.
Gardeners do everything they can to get rid of moles, which are responsible for almost all the disturbances that occur in the area. In fact, they are soil orderlies, because moles destroy many pest larvae and loosen dense soil.
Shrews are tiny insectivores that look like very small dark mice. But unlike rodents, they are extremely useful in the garden. Of the insects in the food of shrews, beetles predominate (leaf beetles, ground beetles, beetles, dung beetles, weevils, darkling beetles); they also eat caterpillars of butterflies, grasshoppers, flies and hymenoptera. Moreover, per day, the shrew eats an amount of food several times greater than its own weight.
If hedgehogs live in your dacha, then you will not be threatened by hordes of snails and slugs, and your home will be free from rodent attacks. Milk or a little low-alcohol beer, slices of cheese, and providing shelter for the day can attract hedgehogs, which will be excellent guards in your garden. To attract hedgehogs to their plots, Hungarian peasants in the Middle Ages placed troughs of beer under each bush in their garden. It was believed that in a state of hangover, a hedgehog becomes even angrier and more merciless towards garden pests and more vigilantly protects the area where it lives from them.
Unlike moles and shrews, the hedgehog goes into hibernation in the fall, so you should be careful to give it the opportunity to get into the basement or barn - into a well-ventilated nook.
Bats - although rumor attributes to them a thirst for blood, in fact they hunt only insects on the Eurasian continent. Long-eared bats, water bats, pond bats and long-whiskered bats often fly into gardens in search of food - most of them are harmful nocturnal insects (mainly mosquitoes and pest butterflies). During the daytime, bats are inactive and hide in tree hollows or outbuildings on the site. They should not be disturbed at this time. If these bats like the shelter, they will settle there for a long time and may even begin to breed.

Plants that Attract Beneficial Insects