That is truly WEIRD... unless that variety of sparrows is bug eaters and there were bugs on your tree and in eating the bugs they destruyed the buds...I personally have NEVER had a tree of any kind let alone a JM injured like that period let alone descimated...I would keep it watered and mulched and see what happens it may shoot out some new buds but whatever I don't think there is anything you can do about it ...except defintely invest in a couple of bird feeders if you replant.Are you sure thats what happened ??? ..not that I don't believe you but doesn't sound right ...maybe someone else here has had this happen to them and I will be convinced ;>) David

Wow, I've never heard of that before, either. The birds might have gotten even with you for taking down the feeders... not even funny. I'd be pretty upset, too, so I hope you don't mind that bit of humour... Hopefully, it won't prevent the tree from sprouting still - the little bit of green you still see might be the rest of the leaf bud, and it may still sprout. Let us know what happens?

do you have deer in your area?

I live in Essex Ontario and earlier this spring my wife and I watched a bunch of sparrows eat every bud on our Japanese Maple. This is the first time ever that we've seen this. We now have a tree with only 4 leafs. ??????

Strong bump

I have a lot of Japanese maples and I've never seen it. Never even heard of it also. That's not to say it can't happen, but it's extremely rare if it did.

I live in noethern Ohio. I have 2 lace leaf japanese maple bushes that the Chickadees are stripping the leaves off by eating the base of the leaf stem. Im afraid its killing both of them. What can I do?

Japanese maples can lose a LOT of leaves without harm. In fact, they can completly defoliate during the growing season and still put out a full new flush of healthy foliage (don't ask me how I know :-)). Losing a few leaves to birds is in no way going to kill them!!

At this time of year in northern OH, I wouldn't have any concerns.......the tree will be dropping ALL its leaves very shortly anyway.

Bizarre! I have sparrows/chickadees galore and they never touched any of my JMs. Must be a lack of food causing them to eat things they normally would not eat.

Bonsai practitioners frequently de-foliate JMs because they will regrow secondary leaves that will be smaller than the original leaves. If it is not otherwise stressed, your tree should be fine, it may not leaf out until next year.

The best way to stop/prevent it would be put some bird seed out.

I have the same EVERY year with sparrows eating my JM trees (3 ifof them). I'm really stsrtingstarting to loose patience with those birds now.

The same happened to me in NY state. My question is will the tree survive?

Did you read the previous comments? Yes, the tree will survive.

The same thing happened to me in New York City this year. Sparrows stripped the two Japanese maples on my terrace this April. One red leaf on each tree. No photosynthesis for them this summer.

We have had bird feeders out for several years without any problems. Then, last spring, sparrows ate most of the buds off our beautiful 14-foot high Japanese maple. It produced only about 1/3 the number of usual leaves. This year it didn’t bud at all and the branches all appear dead. Is there any hope of reviving the tree by pruning back aggressively and fertilizing?

Sorry to hear that. I did finally get half to three quarters of the red leaves I expect.

Next year I will reluctantly shoo away sparrows eating buds. I love both birds and my maples.

Can you post photos? As noted upthread, a JM that loses early foliage for whatever reason will generally releaf without issue. The possible exception is Verticillium wilt but that usually shows up later in the season. When it does show up early, the tree will generally attempt to leaf out but the leaves quickly wilt and die off. No buds and no foliage by May is not a good sign and would tend to indicate the tree is already dead

No pruning anything yet. Give it some time to see what happens. And you never want to fertilize a stressed plant. All that does is increase stress.

I live in Scotland, and this year sparrows have eaten around half of the leaf buds on our Japanese Maple. I am watching carefully to see if the tree puts out new leaves, but so far it doesn't look hopeful.I would be interested in others who had this problem last year, and did your trees revive? The tree is about 30 years old and around 15feet tall.

This is the first year mine has been affected too. A few weeks ago a flock of sparrows ate most of the buds. But, I can now see new buds starting to emerge.

This just happened to us this year…in Toronto also. I literally watched a robin eating the buds and now a large majority of the tree has no new leaves emerging…so bizarre

I thought I was seeing things till reading these comments. sparrows have totally eaten allthe leaf buds on my beautiful tall acer. not content with that they now attacking my potted acers. i wouldnt care but I feed them every day. So angry!