Great it uploaded.
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Good job Lola!
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Right after I saw a toy fox from @Graftman (Thanks for posting. It’s more cute than intimidating) 
So, when I first saw Lola, I thought that’s Scott’s toy cat.
Well, until I saw a bird in her mouth. She is a hunter indeed. Cat is best for squirrels, too. I hope my neighbor cats roam my yard again this year. I only saw one of them once a few weeks ago. There used to be 3.
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Lola is the best hunter of our three cats. She is lightning fast. She also loves to hunt, usually she wants to stay indoors all day but with the blueberry action she is up and out early, and not back in til dark.
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Does Lola eat her prey or just hunt and show off her “prize” to you?
My friend feral cat, Oreo, was a great hunter. She hunted squirrels and took them home to my friend. At first, it scared my friend to death when she opened the door in the morning and almost stepped on a dead squirrel. She learned to look before stepping out after that.
Unfortunately, Oreo disappeared. My friend suspected that a coyote took her. Her replacement cat is a wimp, not a hunter. A feral cat is what we need.
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Our three cats are all from the wild, there are a lot of stray cats around. Lola eats her prey, I find the leftovers scattered about. The vet says her teeth are really clean from her diet 
The other cats have teeth issues.
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When I fly radio controlled aircraft about the same size as predator birds, all kinds of birds haul ass to get out of the area . It also the attracts real predator birds from miles around. Can’t keep it airborne continually though.
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The birds have gotten used to my little fox. This morning I had blue jays, mocking birds, and robins in the patch. Time for something new.
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My sister had something like this at the front door area of her house one Halloween.I wonder if that might work.The thing was motion activated. Brady
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If it moves and makes loud noises, it may work. Can you die it to the color that could scare birds?
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I saw a video of one moving(it seemed more slowly than my sister’s model) and it was making all kinds of howling and screams.The thing could probably be colored and maybe a few pieces of bird tape added. Brady
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This guy has quite the setup.There’s probably no birds in his yard,let alone wildlife. Brady
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKlEseOdrcA
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Time for an update on my new scares on the blackberries… not a lot of luck unfortunately. The main problem I have is catbirds, they don’t seem to be all that upset by the scares. I haven’t seen any robins in the blackberries and overall the damage is less than usual, so its not a total failure. I am using plastic snakes, standing hawk models on high poles, scare tape, and holographic reflecting owls in various combinations. The only new scare I don’t have set up yet is the hawk kite above, I have not had time to make a mount for it. I will need to use a wheel or bearing so it can rotate into the wind.
I put up the scares after a few blackberries ripened so I may have been a bit late. So, another reason why I call it only a partial failure. But I will be netting the larger blackberry plantings on the holiday tomorrow.
PS I linked all the scares I am using above except the standing hawk models. Here are the hawks I am using:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002KSVXGU/
I have these on tall poles and am going to put them on even taller poles that I recently bought (electrical conduit pipe).
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One more update on my scares… in one patch I have two of the reflecting owls above as well as two snakes and a hawk on a pole. This one patch of blackberries is doing pretty well, with only minimal bird predation. I have been moving around the snakes, I should move around the other things more. Maybe I will get out tonight and move the owls and hawks. I have one owl on this very flexible pipe, its always bopping up and down in the breeze. It was a drain pipe from Home Depot. I should get another pipe like that for the other owl. The owls have little bells which ring quite a bit, even in a light breeze they ring. I might try getting more owls as well. They are on poles so I can easily move them about.
In the back I have a patch with a snake, some scare tape and one hawk overlooking. This patch is mostly getting eaten by the birds.
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I’m wondering if you could set up an array of motion sensors pointed at the sky to avoid false triggers. You could have them set up to some cheap loud radios or something. The whole thing could run off of a car battery.
Edit: How about motion activated water sprinklers like this?
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B009F1R0GC/ref=pd_aw_sbs_86_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=RKRT1AJT7T34MM1VBQ99&dpPl=1&dpID=51lzS9UvYdL
It looks like you can set up an array of them to run off of one sensor so you can blast a large area.
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I have half a dozen of that exact model of sprinkler. I only have them running at night for deer. The detection doesn’t seem sensitive enough for small birds, but they do list birds… I wonder if they only mean bigger birds? Reading the questions and reviews it seems like it didn’t work for someones blueberries, but someone else said it fired for birds for them. It might be worth a try at least, especially because I already have a bunch of them!
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Yes, I noticed that too. I know sensitivity is proportional to distance ( among other things) on most of those sensors. I wonder if you could set the sensors at least on the most popular branches, and set your sprinkler arrays in such a way to hit all the trees at the same time?
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I hate birds!
After a lot of trial and error, we have decided the only sure fire method the exclude birds is a net. We pulled a net over the entire blueberry field for a few years, but it required a huge effort to get up and take down. We will never do that again!
My birds eventually got comfortable with all the scare devices we tested so the scares quit working. Even the Avian Control Repellent did not work this year. Fortunately, they last long enough to get most of my blueberries picked before the birds can finish them off. The birds are worse on the late blueberries and at the moment, they are eating the fruit faster than I can get it picked. They are also pecking on the apples and the peaches growing in the top of the trees. Damn Birds.
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I am more or less with you on most of my crops, its too much work to net them and I’ll just do the best with scares. I keep learning more about scares and getting a little better with them. No it won’t be perfect but I hope to at least bring in the majority of the crop.
It might be a good idea to have a tiered plan on the scares, basically each week or two add something new to the mix. For my deer that has been working this year, the sprinklers alone worked for awhile but when they faded I rotated on different repellants. Its more work because you have to keep changing the game on them. With squirrels its a lot easier, once the trap hammers them there is no more they can learn!
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