Tried netting - impossible and frustrating on trees.
Tried scare-eye balloons - the birds and I both laughed.
Tried hanging CDs shiny side out.
Firearms is not an option.
Chicken wire cages work for grapes & blueberries.
Cherries are defenseless.
Anyone have any luck with anything?
Even I’m struggling with the birds. They are getting bolder and nastier by the day. An owl with a bobble head maybe?
A cat maybe. A human is the best
Bird netting doesn’t seem to bother me. I use it every year. takes 15 min to cover my Kristin Cherry, and Montmorency Cherry. When the cherries are ready to be picked, I take off the netting and fold it up for next year. I usually only have it on for 5 or 6 weeks. from petal fall till harvest
I planted mulberries as target fruit since the birds prefer them. I dont lose cherries to birds anymore.
I’d need too many owls.
I found a robin’s nest in one of the pear trees yesterday and I don’t have the heart to remove it … I’m a sucker.
I read that in a nursery catalog and thought it was probably baloney.
You mean it works?
How long to wait before it sets fruit?
Doesn’t the tree grow through the holes in the netting making it almost impossible to remove without damage?
That’s what drove me nuts when I did it.
There are cats roaming around so I guess that’s been tried…
I mostly use it on peaches but I only put it up a week or two before harvest (or when I first notice bird damage). It’s not on the tree long enough for anything to grow through it and prior to that, the peaches are too hard to be appealing… My peach trees are all pretty short so it’s easy to throw the net over the top. For plums I have to use a ladder, but again, I only keep it on for a couple weeks, if I do at all. For some reason, the birds haven’t bothered the plums too much, and this year, the joke’s on them…I have no plums!!! Hahahhaa…sniff, sniff…cry, cry.
How tall is your cherry tree? Have you tried using netting from American Nettings? The quality of their materials is very good and hardly tangle with trees. They are much better than Home Depot black nets. Not cheap, unfortunately but it lasts.
I have been using bird netting for years, it works great.
The same netting can be used for many years. I use it to cover blueberry first, then, right before peaches turn red, I use netting cover all the peach trees. After peach harvest, I cover the grapes with the sme netting.
I only have 4 peach trees, so it works great for me. As long as I cover the peach before the fruits turn red, I have no bird damage.
Cheap and readily available BirdBlock works great for me. Keep your trees to a manageable size and use a pole or long handle of some kind to place it where you want it from underneath.
Zoom in on this image from the package and you’ll see a guy using a pole to apply the BirdBlock:
Ive always done it. They eat mulberries first.
You’d need to supersize the concept for a tree but for the blueberries, some
pvc pipe threaded onto a piece of rebar pounded into the ground worked great to make a frame for a tunnel. Less snagging on branches and can easily walk around inside to harvest.I used tulle for the first time last year and it was a lot easier to work with than official bird netting. The bird net stuff seems too difficult to maneuver, plus birds get caught in it and…have a very bad time. Tulle is cheap and comes in 4.5ft. or 9ft. wide bolts in a wide variety of colors. In rope, polyester is the marine rope because it holds up so well to UV. I’m thinking the same goes for tulle. I bought 40 yards (120 ft.) x 4.5 ft. of green for $12 or ? last year. Search the interwebs and you’ll see that it’s popular. Pronounced similar to ‘tule’ but give it your best Svedish accent, yah?
Green nets from American Nettings work for me. Nothing else does. Obviously, need to keep trees of manageable size.
I have a large mulberry tree that sets a lot of fruit, but birds eat them even before they get black. Does not seem to distract them a bit from eating everything else at the same time. I have a lot of birds.
Netting really works for me. That’s all I ever use, I just have to keep the trees at a manageable size like Mr. Clint said. Now if you have trees over 10 feet, then I can understand your frustration for sure! I just got done building a blueberry structure that is 14 feet x 22 feet and all I have to do now is just finish netting it. I refuse to let those birds eat up all my hard work!!! I know that this does not help you much, especially if you have huge trees, but I sure hope that you don’t lose too much of your hard work either! I do hope that you can come up with a solution to deter those little creatures away!
