A strange observation. You may expect to find a  scarecrow in an orchard plump with falling fruit or a field close to harvest. Yet you may wonder why, near Gecko Villa, a rustle of scarecrows seems to have taken up guard in front of village houses. Dressed in old clothes, they bear hand written signs around their necks. Linger a little and you may observe young men walking in or out of these houses with at least one fingernail painted either red or another garish colour.

A peculiar colloquialism. The expression "for the birds" is a shortened version of the vulgar WWII American "sh_t for the birds" meaning ridiculous or only of interest to the gullible. The expression evokes birds pecking at horse droppings ("road apples")  to find seeds. Both versions were defined in an edition of American Speech in 1944.

Origin of the Specious. When three young men all died within a short period of each other in a distant village, news spread rapidly and a common thread was found. All the dead had been born on a Tuesday or a Wednesday - and all were male. It was evident that the bloodthirsty ghost of a deceased widow had preyed on these young men and developed a predilection for young men with these birthdays. Thus, a scarecrow in the local village shoos away those ghosts who would prey on adolescents, notifying the evil spirits, politely and with Shakespearean precision, that this particular house is home to no young man born on a Tuesday or Wednesday. The painted fingernails are also a cunning device to confuse these very same ghosts into believing that the hands are those of a girl, not of a man.

Thus we can conclude, not at all literally, that scarecrows are For the Birds.