A common problem for composters is keeping others from sorting through the pile. A big warm heap of edible material tempts a wide variety of animals, from rats to bears to flies. Some of these, if well behaved, don’t cause much problem. Others cannot be tolerated.
We have trouble with ravens. They like to dig through our compost piles. This wouldn’t be too seriously, generally. They never dig too deeply, I suppose the bacteria and other microorganisms they bring with them contribute much to the composting/curing process. But, they make a big mess, throwing the compost and biofilter around, and our compost must stay within the confines of the bin.
We’re not sure what brings the ravens to the pile, but we suspect it might be egg shells. All birds apparently seek calcium, to aid in egg development, and there’s probably no better source than other birds’ eggshells. We roast ours in the vent of the oven, or on the wood stove, then crumble them small before adding them to the compost, but the ravens still sort through our pile, and we can’t tolerate that.
I recently built a lid for the compost bin, to exclude the ravens.
The new compost lid (Photo: Mark A. Zeiger).
