Since humans began farming, birds have proved the gravest threat to crops of all kinds, both during sowing and at harvest time. ‘In autumn they cause great damage in the vineyard,’ noted the 14th-century German scholar Konrad von Megenberg; the subjects of his complaint were starlings.
Throughout the ages, solutions of varying effectiveness have been proposed. The Roman poet Virgil bemoaned the damage done by geese and recommended bird snaring even on festive days; late-13th-century Italian writer Pietro de’ Crescenzi advised protecting ripening grapes through the use of a tower-like contraption in the centre of the space with cords to connect it to all parts of the vineyard, manned by a young boy pulling the strings.
The most lasting and culturally significant method of crop protection is, of course, the scarecrow: a clothed, sometimes hatted, straw-filled guy on a wooden framework, intended to resemble the farmer or a farmworker to frighten away any birds. A relic of our pre-industrial past, it has long since been practically replaced by more efficient and effective methods; yet, in cultural terms, it endures.
From Austria to Brazil, Egypt to Japan, this rickety guardian of the field has been quirkily ubiquitous. Scarecrows are mentioned by the Andalusian writer Abu’l-Khayr in the 11th-century Book of Agriculture and, in Measure for Measure, Shakespeare writes: ‘We must not make a scarecrow of the law,/Setting it up to fear the birds of prey,/And let it keep one shape, till custom make it/Their perch and not their terror.’ Here, the scarecrow serves as a metaphor, a readily comprehensible image: the device reveals not only that scarecrows were widespread by this date, but that they were also not hugely effective.
Perhaps the most famous scarecrow of all is Ray Bolger's brainless companion in 'The Wizard of Oz'.
The precursor to the scarecrow was a boy, who would hurtle about a field flailing his arms and shouting ‘shoy hoy’ in an attempt to scare away the birds (this may have informed the archaic alternative name ‘shewel’). The 16th-century English poet and farmer Thomas Tusser went a step further, suggesting stone throwing or arrow shooting, too, and advised readers: ‘No sooner a sowing, but out by and by,/With mother or boy that Alarum can cry:/And let them be armed with sling or with bowe,/To skare away piggen, the rooke and the crowe.’ Although some sources suggest the Ancient Egyptians set up scarecrows in the fertile farmland along the banks of the Nile, in Britain, it is thought that the scarecrow came about as a result of the Black Death: with labour in short supply, farmers could no longer spare someone dedicated to scaring away birds and so turned to distinctive, sometimes eerie dummies.
In succeeding centuries, the scarecrow became commonplace across rural England and was exported far beyond. Region by region, his name varied as much as the individual figures’ appearance: in Somerset he was called ‘mommet’, in Devon ‘murmet’, in Yorkshire and Lancashire he was a ‘mammet’ and in Berkshire a ‘hodmedod’. There were, of course, scarecrows on the grain-growing prairies of the USA: who could forget the one with the head ‘full of stuffin’ who capered along the Yellow Brick Road with Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz? By the time the film was released in 1939, however, scarecrows’ days were soon to be numbered: an increasingly mechanised agricultural sector after the Second World War had far less use for them.
Yet, that wasn’t the end of the story. In 1935, The Children’s Hour on BBC radio introduced young listeners to cantankerous scarecrow Worzel Gummidge. He proved so popular that he would go on to appear in children’s books by Barbara Euphan Todd and several television series from 1953. A later one would star Doctor Who’s Jon Pertwee (in 1980, he sang a pop hit in character) and contributed to suggestions of scarecrows’ unsettling, otherworldly qualities. The series was shot in an almost psychedelic light, with Worzel himself sporting an alarming array of heads, including a mangelwurzel, turnip and a swede. Worzel and his wife, Aunt Sally, with her feverishly rouged cheeks, enjoyed success across the globe, giving rise to Worzel Gummidge Down Under, filmed in New Zealand.
As the population of Nagoro slowly dwindles, the artist Tsukimi Ayano is slowly replacing residents with 'kakashi'.
Scarecrows have taken on different characters worldwide. Ting mong in Cambodia, armed with wooden rifles and spears and clad in old helmets, are in fact effigies meant to protect households from spirits that might bring illness into the home; they gained popularity during the Covid pandemic. Those of Poland are no less intimidating: the term for scarecrow, strach na wróble, carries the alternative meaning of ‘bogeyman’.
In parts of Japan, the scarecrow has long been cast in a more spiritual role, revered as a sacred guardian of the field and honoured accordingly with small gifts. Indeed, in the Shinto religion, Kuebiko, a god of wisdom and agriculture, is depicted as a scarecrow. Today, in the near-deserted village of Nagoro on the island of Shikoku, artist Tsukimi Ayano — called the ‘Scarecrow Mother’ — has populated the once bustling streets with 200 kakashi. Japan is rapidly urbanising, with one of the largest ageing populations in the world: as young people move away to cities and elderly residents die, thousands of villages are left to crumble ignominiously, leaving nothing but empty houses and derelict infrastructure. Thanks to Ayano, in Nagoro the scarecrow has become more than a bundle of rags crudely arranged to resemble a person: it stands now as a symbol of the difficulties faced by rural communities.
Perhaps things haven’t changed so much after all, and these haunting figures are once again spiritual guardians of the landscape and their communities.
This feature originally appeared in the June 3, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe