My wife grew some sunflowers this year and near the end of the growing season, a friendly squirrel began to visit and relieve us of the flower heads. I captured the above picture of our friend the squirrel taking a break from actually mowing down the top of the sunflower prior to its removal from the stem.
Below is a photo that Abby took of that same squirrel with his quarry on a post. As he munches, petals fly and we mourn the loss of our flowers. Yesterday I pulled the ~18 head-less stalks from our garden.
I think this is what happened to mine! had a big beautiful one, the seeds werent even ready yet and I came outside to find the head 80% gone/eaten, with leaf carnage everywhere- the top 4 had been ripped off. on top of that, his neighbor (a taller but thinner flower) was broken. I assumed they had jumped from the fence next to the flowers, but your pix look like they can just climb the stalks!? is there anyway to stop them?
Sadly, I don’t know of a way to stop the little critters. They continued to climb up the stalks and swipe the heads. We’re hoping that this year they’ll forget the flowers exist, but I doubt that’ll work.