Doves are eating Salvias?? WOW. That's a first for me. yeah, I dunno what to say about that myself...

This is strange indeed! You referred to the birds as doves, are you referring to Rock Doves (aka common pigeon) or Mourning Doves?

Morning Doves feed almost entirely on small seeds on the ground. They often eat seeds of grasses and weeds such as foxtail, crabgrass, panicgrass, chickweed and smartweed.

Rock doves (aka common pigeon) eat mainly seeds, although their diet can include popcorn, nuts, bread, chips etc.

Cindi

The doves may have been eating seeds around the base of the salvia but it's not likely they were eating the plants. I have a lot of mourning doves and an occasional pair of ring necked doves but I've never had them eat or even dig up a plant.

They were pecking at my lady in red that was in full bloom , maybe they were getting some seeds from that. For whatever reason they kept coming back to it. So today Im putting out a bird feeder maybe that will occupy them for a while.

My doves don't eat from feeders. They pick up what the others drop, I believe they're called ground foragers? Christy :)

Yeah..Doves are the main membes of my "Clean-up Crew".

Doves don't eat plants. You can put a chicken wire frame over your salvias though, if they are damaging them as they peck around for seeds.

The surest way to distract doves is to put some black oil sunflower seeds on the ground away from the salvias. Under a birdfeeder is best, because they will see all the seed hulls and look for uneaten ones among those.

Yes, I dont know why the doves were so insistant on picking at my LIR but these are very small at this time, anyway I bought this bird feeder that holds 5lbs and hung it from a yard light with fencing around that and you are right they mainly were satisfied with the seed dropping of the other birds feedings, but one of the doves hopped up on the fence hoping to feed from the feeder , but realized he couldnt get on the narrow ledge of the feeder. The birds emptied the feeder in 2 or 3 days, could get expensive.

I got tired of the doves and squirrels eating all of my birdseed. I went to Wild Birds Unlimited and bought a feeder that is weighted so only smaller birds can use it. Now the doves and squirrel eat what falls on the ground under the feeder. The feeder was expensive, but they were cleaning out my other feeders daily.