has anyone tried the audio bird scares? http://www.birdgard.com/ and BirdXPeller® PRO | Sonic Bird Control | Scare Birds | Bird-X are two options I’ve seen.
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I’ve heard of commercial wineries using sound cannons, they basically have timed booms that scare all of the wildlife in the area away. It could be very irritating for neighbors though.
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My problem is the neighbor issue, unless there are some ultrasound scares…
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I was just looking at some of the cheaper ultrasound\LED\PIR machines. Has anyone tried them, do they actually work against orchard pests?
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I have a pestzilla Ultrasonic/LED/Alarm motion detect animal scare. SAVE YOUR MONEY!
Nothing short of a human size animal will set it off. When it does go off the critters go over to it to see what’s making noise.
It doesn’t even scare my dog. She puts her nose on it while it alarming trying to figure it out.
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Thanks for the warning!
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Guess no one has tried them. I’m going to try the bird guard device next year starting with blueberries. Its expensive, but if it does not work or if it drives my neighbors crazy, I get my money back.
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Please let us know how it goes. They also sell a deer-guard model. I’m tempted to try it - if only the price wasn’t so high.
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A freaken drone that shoots lasers at anything else flying in the area. I d on’t care if bald eagles are dropping out of the sky (and/or an occasional cessna)…if my fruit stay peck free…its really all that matters 
I’ve seen a ton of pecking damage the last week. Birds have just become a bigger issue every year. I think a row of shrubs is getting the chainsaw treatment…becoming a bird nursery…not good when there are fruit trees 5 feet away.
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Just bought and installed a Bird Guard Super Pro machine. Its well made with a lot of adjustments, including distress calls for specific birds designed to cover about 4 acres. Its expensive but it should reduce most of my bird problems. I have 12 months to try it out and return for full credit if I’m not happy, so I can’t loose.
I’m testing the device now in the apples. Its recommended that the device is mounted and working BEFORE the birds arrive, so my installation is late. I’m over run with birds left over from the blueberries that just moved into the apples. Its loud at medium volume with lots more power left. I bet my neighbors are going to love it!
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I saw someone back in June use this while driving around, so I’m trying it now for my peaches/necs/grapes. Got these from the Dollar Store. Anyone have any experience with these? Probably should have got silver, but they’re still pretty shiny.
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I’ve been using a 6 foot long wind sock like the ones you see at the airport, seems o chase things away… .seems to work really well.
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Its really bizarre but I’m not seeing any birds around my house at all now. Throughout the spring and early summer there were robins all over the places with a lot of assort small birds like sparrows and titmouses. Now there are hardly any. Maybe its that redtail hawk that circles over my neighborhood every evening thats keeping them away. I didnt get to harvest any cherries this year due to bird pressure. Even my earlier blueberries were taken by birds. Now I still have blueberries hanging on my bush for a month or so without no bird pressure. Nothing has touched my raspberries either. knock on wood.
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There may be something else in the area that is a lot more appetizing. I also have fewer birds recently in my orchard. Also thankfully the nuts are in and the squirrels have turned 180 degrees from fruit trees, they are not bothering me at all now.
Re: all the scares I put up, I ended up doing pretty well on my main patch of blackberries with the reflecting owls (they seemed the best subjectively), rubber snakes, and hawk on pole. I don’t think I can protect the blueberries with this as the birds go a bit nuts for them but I am going to try at the very start next year and see. This year I was too late for the blueberries.
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Last year, I had a lot of bird pressure, mostly catbirds, on my blueberries and raspberries. They never seemed to bother the black fruit, black currants and blackberries.
This year a family of Cooper’s Hawks moved into the large oaks around me and I haven’t seen a catbird all year. Thanks Nature!
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A recent Planet Money episode (http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/07/28/540084544/episode-786-rest-of-the-story-2017-vol-1) discussed bird scares particularly to protect chickens from eagles. They suggested that a single line of monofilament fishing line between two tall posts in the area to be protected will keep birds from wanting to land in the area. They didn’t offer a definitive reason but suggested it might cause confusion that prevented birds from attempting to land. Not clear if it would stop robins or other ground hopping birds out of the area as they only discussed use with eagles and seagulls. Certainly the low cost and unobjectionable aesthetics are appealing. Anyone ever hear of or try this method?
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Some of the best ideas of bird scares I’ve heard.
A guy who used to go by the handle Gator Rider claimed hanging a plastic owl by the neck from a tall tree or pole with fishing line so that it would dangle in the wind would work.
Of course hanging a dead crow up will repel other crows.
I’ve read that under high bird pressure, any scare device will eventually lose effectiveness against the birds. They simply figure out there is little true risk of the scare device compared to the easy reward of food.
However, one of the most promising scare devices is supposed to be green lasers. Birds are apparently very sensitive to green lasers.
Dr. Rebecca Brown has done research in this area and had good success with laser machines effectively keeping birds away. When I inquired about how to obtain one of these machines, this was part of her response to me:
"Hi Mark,
Thanks for your interest in the laser system. At present there is no one marketing a system specifically for sweet corn. There are two companies that sell lasers for protecting crops; in both cases the primary market is protecting fruit and berry crops, and the units have some issues that need to be resolved to use them for sweet corn.
Carpe Diem Technologies in Vancouver, BC sells a laser scarecrow for ~$3000 that some of the farmers here in RI are using in sweet corn. In order to optimize this laser scarecrow for sweet corn the angle of reflection for the laser beam has to be changed - the units have the beam fixed at ~30 degrees above horizontal, and for corn you want an angle closer to horizontal. Changing the beam angle requires re-machining the mount for the rotating mirror. Growers have also reported a number of mechanical problems with the Carpe Diem lasers.
Birdcontrol LLC out of Oregon sells the Agrilaser Autonomic, which was developed in The Netherlands. This unit is fully adjustable/programmable with regards to the angle of the beam. However, it sells for ~$8,000 and is not really designed to be moved from one field to another. I have no actual experience with the Agrilaser - the cost and the lack of portability have made it a non-option for the larger sweet corn growers here in RI as they have fields scattered all over.
There are some laser units designed for keeping birds out of warehouses, and also green laser light displays sold for Christmas decorations (for example https://www.amazon.com/Arotek-Waterproof-Projector-Spotlight-Decorative/dp/B01IY37XQ8/ref=pd_day0_86_3?_encoding=UTF8&refRID=0YHTH0A1CFKAQ42RD3K1&th=1). I have not tried either of these; they would definitely take some modifying if you want to run them out in the field off of a 12-volt battery. However, the holiday lights have the advantage of being cheap - <$100 for a unit.
Regards,
Rebecca"
Birds are a serious problem for commercial growers. There is a very large blueberry farm about 3 miles from my orchard and they run audio scare constantly. Yet there are still tons of birds which feed on the berries.
I recall about 10 years ago there was a large apple grower in New Zealand who sustained substantial starling damage to apples on the tree and in his packing house (hundreds of thousands of dollars). He hired two full time hunters to try to kill the birds, but couldn’t make a dent in the population.
He finally hired some demolition experts to place explosives in the tree line where the starlings roosted, and got the approval of the fire department. The explosives were detonated after the birds had roosted. As I recall, it killed over a hundred thousand birds (and maimed a bunch). A lot of people were outraged at the loss and suffering of the starlings. My point has nothing to do with the morality of killing/maiming birds, but simply that it’s evident birds can be a very severe problem with no apparent solution, as evidenced that one person resorted to blowing them up with bombs. I think the owner has blown the birds up more than once.
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Scott, did you get to try the water canon sensor thing?
@Olpea, I was just thinking about lasers. I almost bought one a couple of months ago from a dealer in China, but I’ve been researching them first a bit more. There’s a whole sub-hobby on lasers.
For example, you can get handheld battery operated lasers of different colors strong enough to burn now from under 100$. The main safety issue though are eyes, and aircraft. It’s still kind of a gray area as far as importing high mw units goes.
In addition to scareing, perhaps these could be used somehow in lieu of firearms?
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I looked into sugar. It seems to be cost effective only where it seldom rains during the ripening season. I guess there’s no sticker for sugar.
Now there’s a video that would be a huge hit on youtube. Last days of the Roman empire?