Now BIRDS are eating the mud shed?!

You remember my beautiful east wall render, worked smooth and snug around the lovely natural stone?

Well, white-winged choughs are eating it.

Goddamn it.

I really, really, REALLY need to stop making this house out of gingerbread.

It's my own fault.  I'm too lazy to chop up straw into tiny pieces for the render, so I buy bags of chaff.  Chaff is pre-chopped bits of straw meant for animal feed, with some oat seeds in it.

But here's the thing.  Chaff makes for a lovely render.  If you think of mud render being like a concrete mix, chaff is the aggregate.  It gives the clay something to bind.  Without it, the clay will bind to itself and crack when it shrinks.  Chaff also makes a bucket of clay go a lot further, and a lot lighter. It also helps smooth out the bumps in the wall ready for the top coat.  A $20 bag of of chaff will do a whole wall.

Spot the cracks? Nor can I.

The only draw-back is IT'S SODDING EDIBLE.

Back in winter there was a mouse plague, so mice were prising the seeds out of the render and eating them.  It was kind of cute, and soon enough small carnivorous marsupials called Tuans moved in and ate all the mice (hooray! Tuans are endangered - if humans had more sense we'd set up nesting boxes all over Melbourne).

I don't know what to do about the Choughs.  They stand on the ground, attacking the shed with their beaks.  I didn't even know they ate seeds.  Maybe they're just curious? They are glorious creatures that live in big family packs and make an unearthly whistling crying sound.

White-winged Choughs, from the fabulous Natural Newstead website

Perhaps they will stop when I do the next coat of render, since that will enclose the chaff in a layer of mud and manure?

I don't want to chop up my own straw bits, because it's a health hazard (dust and spores) and straw has seeds in it anyhow.

I'm thinking of trying some of that chopped up sugar cane mulch you buy in shrink-wrapped bales.  It costs more than chaff, but it should be seed-free. Perhaps the shed will be attacked by Sugar Gliders and wattle-birds now.