FlyTrapCare Forums

What about the birds outside? Do they eat/pick my dionaea? Or leave they the plants alone?
What is your experience?

In my case the attack was to the LFS, and so, they took the whole plants away with it

So the Dionaea is safe?

I have had robins and sparrows dig up some of my plants before.
Probably looking for something !

I was looking at one of my plant ( 1 year back it's dead now ) and there was a huge bee in one of the traps then suddenly as I looks back my plant was being shredded ALIVE ... but it only ripped one trap out no biggy
I think it will be okay only if the plant hasn't traped something tasty

My plants are outside all year. Birds have never been a problem, but squirrels on the other hand have bug up the occasional plant.

As Coline says, birds arent a problem, they leave the plants alone, generally, the only exception to this is when they are making nests and only then if you have a lot of sphagnum around them. They will pull up the sphagnum for nesting material, it is a great nest liner, but unfortunately sometimes your plants go with it. I have lost hundreds of sarracenia and drosera seedlings in just this scenario, but if there is no moss around them, then they dont go near.

A few sticks in the pot, pointing up to stop them landing, or a net over the plant temporarily during the nesting season, works on the birds, but I know nothing about your squirrels!!!.

Cheers
Steve

Thanks for the reactions.
Lucky for me we don't have squirrels close to our house.

I will put my Dionaea's outside!

They were biting traps off of mine when it was too close to a tree. I think they would sit in the tree and watch for bugs on the traps and swoop down to eat them without very good eye/beak coordination. I moved it farther from the tree and haven't had any more problems so far.

Hi Melle , can I hijack your tread to ask a similar question regarding putting vft outside.

I have this thought of placing a few pot on the ground outside. My concern is only rain! How does very heavy rain affect the young vft or adult vft uproot by strong wind a hard heavy rain? Also the soil gets washed out? Like peat/perlite or LFS?

Fingered from my Galaxy Nexus

I have my plants growing outside, they never come inside. It depends on how heavy it rains. Light showers aren't a problem but when it's heavy I put them under our outdoor sheds roof. But as far as animals go, I found putting them up high small animals won't get to them. Only problem right now for me is drought, and high temperatures so I need to water them more often

Oh I forgot, one time rain wasn't in the forecast and it ended up raining pretty hard overnight. I woke up and some of the traps got triggered but they did no damage to the soil or plants themselves. But it might be due to the fact that I have them in large pots. Maybe smaller ones are more at risk

Tish, if you don't have a backyard then there might be a risk with putting your plants outside- people ( ). I know that Singaporeans are nice and friendly but you never know when your prized dionaea might go missing.

As for rain, I experienced the power of an angry Singaporean storm and they will get quite heavy. Sometimes it feels like hail instead of rain . It is also quite dirty with black bits in them. I think that it will wash away some of the soil and trigger a few traps. The thing you have to watch out for is the rhizome being exposed. Hope this helps .

Yes, rain=no I can answer that to you as a tropical grower. The plants, even sarracenia are toppled over by rain, all the peat out, a real big mess, and most important, the thieves looking for plants, it is not safe. Rains in our countries are really heavy, and the lower in altitude the worse they are.

MisterE24, Snap trap and coline,

Thanks for your precious advise. Ahh so for my tropical country, out door wide open and small pots are out. Wow you guys can advise me as if you stay in Singapore! Yeah once in a while, very heavy rain just come without warning. And the best part is, after few hours. It can be very harsh sun and 85% over humidity. You get to feel how your vft felt when being covered
That's Singapore for you.

Fingered from my Galaxy Nexus