Here is a photo of my peach tree that has had all the blossom stripped by birds. It has also happened to my Victoria plum. So enraging given the years of work to get to this point. Any suggestions on preventing this. I have used hanging CD’c which work on pigeons in the UK, but not sure if New England small birds feel the same! IMG_3102|666x1000
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Maybe some quality netting,that can be added and removed fairly easily.
My peaches have been hit hard by bird pecking. I always see a few but this year is bad due to a light set
A bunch of us have betting our trees. Nettings from American Nettings company is rather popular here. Good quality nettings but are quite expensive. Check out this thread.
I have the blossom eating bird problem in spades! Every year…
I use crow and hawk decoys and this year I added silver mylar balloons that dance around the periphery of the tree. Worked well.
Netting is problematic at blossom time. It hangs up on blossoms and fruitlets because the trees haven’t leafed out enough yet. It works, but it’s painful to apply and remove.
Netting has worked much better for me when we built a structure from PVC pipes and draped the netting on it. It has eliminated the netting tangling with twigs and branches.
I put up iridescent (silver) scare tape on top of bamboo pole, too. I do not when fruit esp. cherries are about to ripen. I feel that leaving scare tape too long, birds get used to it and won’t be scared.
I netted our blueberries to prevent birds from stealing them once ripe, birds eventually learned how to sneak underneath the netting. So one day I killed one with my pellet rifle and hung him high above the blueberries so all could see. That ended the sneakers.
Dennis
Kent, wa
I agree. Anything left in place too long loses the scare effect. I put the birds and the balloons out when the blooms start to open and put them away after petal fall.
Thanks for all the advice everybody! I just purchases these and I noticed the blackbirds are not that bothered, but hope the smaller birds are!
Good luck!
The fake owl worked for us as long as we moved it around every few days. Then it became a home for mean wasps and we stopped moving it. The lack of change definitely killed the level of effectiveness.
(Now my kids are more afraid of plastic owls than the birds are.)