the birds around here rarely touch my fruit. 4 sour cherries full of fruit and its ignored. went to check on the progress of my Clarks crab which set a 1st good crop and they plucked 80% of the thumb sized apples off the tree just to do it. anyone see this before? these apples didnt have any color other than green. 20ft from it my Juliet cherry is starting to color up, untouched. w,t.h!
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Squirrels will often go through lots of green fruit and discard each one before they decide to stop, but Iāve never seen birds do it. Crows and magpies only occasionally hit a few apples toward the top of my tree but havenāt done any serious harm.
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thereās a chipmunk living in the garage but ive never seen him in the trees. was hoping the cat got him before he starts storing nuts in there for the winter. i guess its possible. there are a few pine squirrels living in my big spruces, but theyāve never bothered with my fruit that i know of. ill keep a eye out. ive had a live and let live mentality with them but that might have to change. the crows sometimes pluck unripe honeyberries but only off the lowest branches. there would be broken branches if they landed on that small tree.
Agree with Mark, Iāve seen squirrels and chipmunks wreck green fruit seemingly just for the hell of it, but birds seem to be more civilized in this regard.
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Well, I was surprised to see what looked more like a river otter than anything else running away from my orchard/garden a couple of mornings ago. Donāt think It was a squirrel, cat, raccoon, skunk, muskrat, armadillo, mink, fox, coyote or opossum. Whatever it was it looked to have played in a puddle of water/mud that was left over from my watering stuff. If it was a river otter it had āotterā stay away from my orchard/garden. 
Didnāt somebody say that river otters are really playful?
Something has been eating the green apples. Iām trying to put a stop to that by putting a fence around them. Birds have been getting the blueberries but Iām getting a few for myself.
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Sh-h-h-h! Birds are GOOD! Today I was checking my trees for beetles and was really surprised that despite some leaves damage I do not see a single beetleā¦ Until I got inside my berry enclosure that is covered with net from all sides, so no birdās accessā¦ There was a beetle fest inside!
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@steveb4
I am just about to finish the final round of apple and pear thinning. There were a few green fruit that got birdās pecks.
I have seen squirrels on my pear and apples trees. Like others said, they took bites of those green fruitlets just to try them out.
Also, I have seen chipmunks on high branches of my trees before. They are nasty little rodents.
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I donāt share that opinion todayā¦I went out with my daughter to pick back currants (something I do each July 4th). Except this year the birds cleaned them out. We got maybe 0.2 pints instead of 4-6 quarts.
Soon after, I was looking at traps for Spotted Lantrenfly (in addition to tons on weedy ToH, Iām seeing lots of them on grapes and a few on figs) and saw that some people were complaining that sometimes birds get caught in them. I clicked āBuyā.
Iāve been intensively trapping/eliminating chipmunks and squirrels in my back yard. I had assumed that it would clear the entire area, but it seems that there are still some active in my front yard. Several weeks before they were ripe, the entire graft of Arctic Glo was completely stripped. They left most (all?) the peaches on the tree. It seems the squirrels movement isnāt enough to set off the ring doorbell camera, but when I carefully went over several days of footage, I noticed a couple times when a car went by and a squirrel ran out of the treeā¦
A few trees over (still in the front) I also noticed that all of Stanās seedling apricots have disappeared. No good camera angle on this one, but I would bet on squirrels here too. Looks like I need to do some trapping in the front yard too.
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~80 of the 30 corn I planted this year have been destroyed. They were repeatedly dug up (hence the larger numerator, I replanted most of them several times before they were irreparably damaged) and tossed on the ground. About six surviving plants made it to just under three feet tall. And I went outside last night to find all of them chop and dropped at the base or a few inches up. I #@%&ing love rabbits.
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You have my sympathy. I thought I had to only deal with squirrels in the backyard (quieter and more trees).
The front yard is a small, short street with cars and people walking so I thought squirrels would not dare. Iāve found squirrels coming across the street to attack my fruit (have jujubes and plums) in the front yard. They are harder to trap, too.
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My experiences are that for every one you relocate another moves in. Iāve relegated myself to just preventative measures and growing more fruit than they can wipe out.
Iāve never really had a grey issue until this year. Usually I have a red squirrel or two hanging around and not many greys. This year itās no reds and 5-10 greys. The reds are fairly territorial so maybe that has something to do with it.
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The Fox squirrels are welcome to any fruit they like. Greys gotta go.
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Itās been a while since I planted any corn, but I had a bit of extra garden space at one rental and put in about 20 seeds last week (4 rows of 5). Even before I left the site, I had to chase the birds away a couple times, so Iām sure it got dug up. So, I came back a few days later, sowed another ~20, then covered it with some orange fencing. Once they start to germinate I can remove it. Itās still possible for birds to crawl under it, but Iām hoping they wonāt want to put them selves in such a vulnerable situation just to dig around. For what itās worth, I didnāt see any birds this timeā¦
In my yard, they are a real pain. So far, they seem to ignore anything in a pot and go for anything planted in-ground. Iām trying a new strategy. These pole beans were planted in the ground, after which I put a old decorative metal pot with a rusted off bottom around them. So far, so good.
Iāve got a trap within 5 feet of my front door nowā¦
Unless you are relocating them a LONG way, they could just be coming back. I had a friend who used to spray paint their tails orange before releasing them. I moved them quite a ways, 5-10 miles I think, but said he did find one of the same ones again. I relocate them to the afterlife, so Iāll be much more bothered if they start coming back. 
Some sites seem to have less pressure than others. I have one rental where a bunch of apricots dropped last year and they actually waited for me on the ground without much damage at all. I was there today and picked a few donut nectarines. At 3 other sites they were all stripped before I could get much, if any.
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The corn was transplanted in as ~6" seedlings and most of them were ripped out the ground every day for probably a week. I had newly grafted trees in 1 and 2 gallon pots and those were getting dug into twice a day by either squirrels or chipmunks. A chipmunk ate a hole through the netting and ate/destroyed four fairly loaded second or third year honeyberry bushes. And my nectarine trees first five fruit were stripped about two or three weeks before they would have been ripe. Itās been a bad year.
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Yes I sympathise. Noisy miners here in southern australia pecked off all my fujiās without eating them in 1 day. I had my luisa plum netted and they somehow managed to burrow under the netting and proceeded to peck the ripe ends of the plums . Noisy miners are somewhat hated here.
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You are very lucky !! Here in Mannheim and up and down the Rhine River green feathered devils with a red ring arround the neck are doing a desaster in the Garden . They discard apple- and plumtrees; the ground is full with green apples and light blue plums. Shooting them is prohibited, if you are caught, the fine is up to 50000 ā¬. My Laser is unvisible and silent, but it takes a lot of time working on the parrots with the laser.
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Our big burly Pyrenees Carly was barking like crazy last night at dusk. Went out and did not see anything. Then she woofed and looked right at my peanuts growing in a 36" tall tub. Surr enough when I walked over there, there were 2 rabbits crouching low in the remains of our peanutsā¦argh!
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I always attributed this behavior to racoons. It has happened to nearly everything I have planted - raspberry plugs, landscape plants, etc.
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I thought I could get a few peaches on my outside tree without protection. But no such luck. The birds ruined half the fruit by the time they were half size. Fortunately I have a 30x30ft net of 30% shade cloth. I had to prune the tree down to size and throw the net over the tree. Iām down to a 25% crop but maybe I can save most of those.
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I went back to remove the orange fencing and it looks like it helped protect against birds taking the seed, but something came along and ate the tops off. That is, the part that stuck up above the fencing. I donāt know if it will keep growing. I
bet that whatever nibbled it will come back and finish it off. I guess I need to build a big steel cageā¦
It also looks like the birds missed some of the first seeding, as there were a number of places where two came up.
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