Lets talk bird scares

General Fruit Growing
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I really want to find a way I can stop netting my berries and cherries, I have too many plantings and I often don’t net the smaller plantings at all for that reason. This year I got most of my cherry crop in with scare tape alone. All was fine until we went away for a weekend and the cats were inside the whole time … and the birds got more brave. I picked what was left of the cherries and netted the blueberries at that point.

Based on my experience up to now, having multiple things can “add up” to more fear and less predation. The cats are not around that often but it seemed to be just enough extra to ward away the birds. Maybe with the right mix of scares and proper deployment I would be pretty well covered. So, I am thinking of adding a few other deterrents to the mix and see if I can find a good method. On the deer I have more or less figured this out, I need my sprinklers on patrol plus I need to be putting down spray deterrents periodically. With both of those in action I am OK.

Heres what I have learned on scare tape: you need to get it out before any of the cherries turn ripe, if they have tasted the fruit they are much harder to turn back. You also need to put a lot of it up, at least based on my limited experience, and try to make sure it is twisting in the wind.

We had some good past threads on this:

A few good things here were the Avian Bird Repellant spray, it sounds like it works if you apply it often enough but it can get expensive. Also some people had luck with the big-eyes things and plastic snakes.

Looking up highly rated scares here is one that reviewers liked:

Anybody try these? I tried an owl and the big-eyes balloon for a few years without a lot of luck.

I expect all scare tape may be alike but this stuff reflects rainbow colors and seems to get better reviews:

Someone made some home-brew hawk models and put them high up:

I might try this option, for less than $20 you can get a realistic hawk kite. You need to make a rigging to keep the kite in flying position even when it is not windy and to rotate into the wind when the puff comes, but I don’t think it would be too hard to rig such a thing with some bamboo. I like how once you make the model you just stick it in the ground.

Then there is the dancing man that @blueberrythrill and @amadioranch are using:

You can also get smaller ones for cheaper that were not designed as bird deterrents:

$110 plus having to power it all the time is making me pause. You probably need to turn it off at night and in rain etc. Someone here put one of them up but I can’t find the post… Oh hey I just found it:

@Chris_in_GA how is that working?

@Stan mentioned some growers in CA are doing honey/vinegar sprays as well:

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I’ll try what bird_x did…the cutout of the birds of prey…seems so e easy, obvious, natural

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Man it sure takes a lot to harvest fruit back east. Add up the critters, diseases, freezes, excess rain, and insects, wow. Makes my greenhouse seem less like overkill. My only real issue is spider mites.

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We have a combination of scare devices including reflective tape, pinwheels, dancing man (Air Crow) and 135DB sonic siren. They provide some deterrent which helps on my acre and a half of blueberries. Last months Good Fruit Grower magazine introduced me to the fact that some large Cherry or Blueberry growers find it cost effective to spend thousands of dollars on cane sugar and spray it on their fruit for bird control.

No research on cane sugar had been done in my state so the Blueberry PHD could not recommend it. He suggested that the sugar could accelerate mold or disease problems in a wet climate like mine.

Nothing beats the economics of cane sugar for bird control if it actually works and does not create a lot of disease and insect problems. I believe it merits a serious test.

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Scott, my Air Crow is working like a champ. I have roughly 30 blueberry bushes and don’t think I’ve seen a bird on them since turning it on. Got a cheapo Walmart outdoor timer hooked to the 100’ extension cord running from my house and it comes on at 7 am and stops in the afternoon.

Blueberry season will be ending soon and the Air Crow’s next mission will be to guard the peach crop, then on to the apple crop. I lost quite a few apples last year to rotting that started by a bird peck and expect less crop loss due to the Airport Crow.

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Awesome Chris. I may bite the bullet on one of those at some point.

@blueberrythrill Re sugar, my guess is it won’t be too bad on blueberries since they are disease resistant. On cherries it could accelerate brown rot. The sugar spray sounds related to the honey and vinegar spray that Stan mentioned growers using. Its probably cheaper to use cane sugar than honey. I don’t think I am going to do any spraying yet, its too much work for me to refresh after every rain around harvest time. But for a commercial grower I can see how it would make sense.

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wonder if there is some sort of motion activated device that would play a recording of different types of birds or prey…not sure if that would be enough to scare the offending birds or maybe even other fruit thieves like squirrels…

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Lots of different bird scare devices are available that produce distress calls. Some allow you to choose the proper distress call for the type of bird eating your fruit. As far as I know they work from a timer rather than a motion sensor and they are expensive, in the $500 - $1000 range for a good one.

We use a siren type device that sounds for 15 seconds every 30 minutes. The interval and frequency can be programmed and its very loud! The same folks that sell the Air Crow dancing man sell the siren also. We keep ours low to the ground so that it fills the area below the bushes with sound. We set the Air Crow on a 6 foot ladder so that it towers over the bushes or trees. We can not use the Air Crow when it’s raining, but the siren is waterproof.

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I picked up a stuffed cat at Goodwill. I have it in my blackberries and move it daily. It has worked well so far.

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Great idea.

Can we see the pic of your cat, please? Just want to see how real it looks.

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Update: I ordered some perched hawk models that I am going to stick on tall poles. I will also try to get a flying hawk up. Plus I got a few big rubber snakes and the shiny owls. I will also scout out the Goodwill to see what I can find in the way of stuffed cats and other predators. My blackberries are ripening soon and I will use them to test various scares. I have four different plantings in different locations.

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Scott,

If it was mentioned earlier in this thread I missed it but were do you get the flying hawk

mike

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Any explanation why honey & vinegar work?

Mike

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I like the cat idea. My opinion is that moving it around daily keeps the birds from getting use to it. Looks like using a cat, snake, and hawk could be very effective if shuffled to new locations daily. Great idea

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Here is the hawk I got:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007CJL62I

I’m not sure if a cardboard cutout would work just as well but I thought I would try this. Its going to need some rigging to get it in a horizontal position when the wind is not blowing much.

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Scott i read that taping scare tape to your hawks and owls will help. Im going to tape up my owls and hawks this weekend.

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The dancing men really do work well for about 6 weeks. We tried spraying avian control this year…im severely unimpressed. Did nothing for bird pressure on peaches, figs, or grapes.

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I have netted my pie cherries most years. I didn’t this year and got fewer. I have seen set ups where they have like a thin soccer goal on each side of the tree up to the ultimate height. Seems like it helps so the net doesn’t get caught so much. I’d like to try it.
John S
PDX OR

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I can’t attach an image from my phone. I don’t what I’m doing wrong. Anyway I think the stuffed animal is actually a fox. It is a bit generic but with oversized features such as large eyes. I have had it out for a week and I think the mocking birds are starting to get used to it.
Version two is to mount two pulleys on an eight foot board with a string around the pulleys and the animal tied to the string. It would be motorized with timers to cycle on for a couple seconds every half hour thus giving the illusion the animal is moving about.

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3264×2448 2.76 MB

Maybe this will work.

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