The Curious Life and Times of Scarecrows

As the spring season of seeding and planting unfolds with shoots and blooms, it also marks the time of year long ago in Europe, when children scuttled through the plots, sounding wooden clappers and sending flocks of birds off into fluttering clouds of mayhem.

A dearth of children in the wake of the Great Plague, led farmers to use adults to guard their crops, some keeping watch in straw huts as Native Americans did, others stood on wooden lookouts.

But as farms grew larger, in their place human-like effigies rose from the fields and thus was born the scarecrow.

Source: Hay, Man: The Curious Life and Times of Scarecrows – Modern Farmer

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