Funny thing is that I’m also in SE Michigan and I have cedar waxwings (who love serviceberries and blueberries) and grackles (who aggressively eat mulberries and I say aggressive because they are even mean to me when I climb in to get some too)
I rarely see bluejays… maybe its my proximity to the water?
Scott
I have read about the traps, I might have to invest in one if they really work well.
19 in one season is a lot! I can waiste hours trying to sneak up on them or waiting for them to come back in range. I can’t use a .22 most of the time because we have livestock in the pastures all around and it’s too risky.
I have a Benjamin Titan pellet gun that works great. However I live in an area that is open enough to shot it. Would not work in the city.
Robins have been caught in the act eating honeyberries/haskaps here, but I haven’t had them bother anything else. They like to dig around in my compost and hunt for worms, which can be fun to watch. Everyone said it already, but catbird is a naughty one. I have sparrows, finches and cardinals around, but none of those have done any fruit picking in my yard so far. We do have serviceberries in the city park down the block that I like to pick, but those were devoured by robins and waxwings. Like, they left only one berry on the bush, and it was cracked.
After saying that catbirds were a pain, I went home to find one inside the netting of my blueberries. He had gotten in and couldn’t get out. My children convinced me to let it go, so I opened a hole for it and it flew away. I’m at work now, but I bet it figured out how to get back in and I will have to let it out again when I get home.
Go out after your kids are in bed
I left a catbird in my netting last summer. He was not caught in the netting of my currant bushes. I thought(human thinking) the bird would want to escape! Nope! He/she just stayed under the netting and ate ALL of th black currants! This year I have boards and bricks holding down the netting. Bird-brain is a misnomer!
My apple trees are pockmarked from all the woodpecker strikes. In addition to ruining the trunks of my apple trees the woodpeckers prefer to peck my ripening shiro plums. I think there are more than one type of woodpecker actors involved.
Crows do a bunch of damage to my apples at times. They like the red ones.
Every exotic migratory songbird used to feed on my balaton cherry tree but the tree is gone because it didn’t survive the leaf spot. I used to sit in a chair and watch all the colorful birds eat my cherries.
i have tons of grackles and haven’t seen them in any of my 15 types of berries… crows are the culprits around here! even the catbirds don’t touch anything here. weird! maybe because i grow many fruit that isn’t native here?
I admit that I’ve had a lucky year with birds leaving berry bushs and CJ/North Star Cherry trees alone. But it’s a really bad Summer for Japanese Beetles, with clouds around all the fruit trees, but Cardinals and Mockingbirds are the only birds eating them, staying in the trees all day long. Hope they aren’t trying to feed them to any chicks tho, those JBs would not go down easy.
Cat birds and brown thrashers. Mocking birds eat fruit but will run all the other birds off while they are nesting, so that are very good for protecting the huckleberries which ripen while they are nesting. They are no protection for later fruits.
The cardinals are moving down on my list of good birds around fruit. They were polite about stealing raspberries but they can put away some blueberries, as I found out today! Big ole Chandler blueberries, too 
Caught in the act again.
First time poster here… Catbirds are definitely the worst in my NE Ohio garden. I think they’re beautiful to look at, and I love their song. I think they like to sit in the garden and taunt me. But they steal blueberries, strawberries, and more. I finally have currants growing this year, and both the catbird and robins are stealing the berries.
In previous years I’d use bird netting, but then I’d find birds and frogs tangled, and I wasn’t always finding them in time to rescue them before they died. There’s one bluejay buried under the blueberry shrubs - seemed sorta fitting.
Also the sparrows - those are so bad I really shouldn’t have bird houses up anymore - they’ve chased out/killed bluebirds in the past, and may have been responsible for a pair of black-capped chickadees abandoning their babies this spring.
Funny thing is that I was just out visiting relatives in KS this past week, and no one had heard of catbirds.
Welcome to the forum, jephers! I don’t know why I don’t have any catbirds around, but I am darn thankful I don’t ! Not yet anyway. 
Lost my first two figs to a bird last week, really bummed!
The catbirds are really taking care of my few Nadias right now, sigh. It and Spring Satin redden up too early, there is too long a period when the birds are after them so I don’t get many fruits. My tube traps have been catching a fair number of catbirds, that doesn’t bother me!
Last year was the first year I had a serious problem with the stone fruits. Something was destroying all the fruit as soon as it started to get soft. I never saw any birds when approaching the trees, so I had to do long distance stakeout with binoculars. Every attack was a group of drab yellow-green birds. They had black wings with white markings. The only thing I can find that fits the description are orioles and goldfinches. Witnessing the attacks made it clear why there was so many fruit damaged in a short period of time. Not only were there a half dozen birds involved, but their behavior was a typical mob frenzy. It seemed like they were in hurry to damage as much fruit as possible in the shortest amount of time. Some would even hang upside down while pecking at fruit. After witnessing the carnage, I immediately rushed ordered several nets big enough to cover the smaller trees.
It was similar situation that prompted me to start covering the blueberries. I was sipping my coffee one morning when I saw a flock of blackbirds land on my blueberry bushes. Same thing, mob mentality had them whipped into a hyperactive frenzy. At they point they are more vandals than thieves.
For what it’s worth, goldfinches behave just that way with my fig tree. They’ll happily peck every ripening fig and strip the tree in short order.
The robins will do the same to any apple that I leave hanging into January. And the crows go after our plums in summer, but they mostly limit themselves to the highest branches.
I thought they were seed eaters. I’ve often wondered if how many animals are primarily looking for seeds when they tear fruit open. A couple times I’ve found evidence under wild apple trees. There were a bunch of apple halves on the ground with the seeds missing. The culprit shredded the top apple halves and left piles of apple frass around each remaining apple half. That is lot of work just for seeds.
I can see finches would coveting figs if the learn how dense they are with seeds.