Two parts: I’m sad about this and wanted to complain. Also, I am genuinely curious what could have done this. Also, wondering if I can prevent it from happening to other trees (which still have fruit on them).
Two enormous pear trees were loaded with fruit. Trees are 30+ feet tall. July 7th my friends were over admiring the trees full of fruit. Last year these ripened in mid-late Aug.
Today (July 12th), I went outside and the fruit is gone. It’s not on the ground. There aren’t partially pecked or eaten bits. There is zero sign these trees ever had fruit. It’s like the fruit evaporated.
In some of the places there used to be fruit the entire stem had been bitten off.
Suspects: racooons? They have mostly pulled up my plants and thrown them. They also seem to enjoy one bite of fruit and throwing the rest on the ground. I would expect to see more of that. Squirrels?? a huge mass of very hungry squirrels? Birds? I saw an ENORMOUS bird - my friend said it was a crow. I swear that was the biggest bird I ever saw. I apparently had never seen a crow before. And there are lots of other birds living here. Plague of locusts?
Possibly a combo of animals. Squirrels during the day and raccoons and opossums at night. I looked at the pics of those pears, there are some small branches that raccoons would not be able to reach without breaking those branches.
Squirrels are more nimble. I swear squirrels bit fruit off just to stick it to you (us). They don’t eat unripe fruit but they want to try. They just bit off some, did not like the taste and dropped it and did it again to every other fruit. I hate squirrels.
The only way you could find out for sure is to set up a camera.
Electric fence has been effective for keeping opossums and raccoons away from my fruit. I turn my fence on a few weeks before it is needed and they don’t return when the fruit is ripe.
How is your fence built? I would like to build a fence but haven’t totally figured out how it should be constructed -how high, how much electrified? at the top or bottom? etc.
Crows love my pears, I have to put out scares or they will take all of them. Squirrels also can strip trees pretty fast. Look on the ground for drops on the vicinity, by rhe kind of damage you may be able to tell what it was.
My trees are not as big as yours, but the same thing happened to me. I am confident mine is raccoons. I’ve dealt with them before I even had some of the fruit bagged. They just tore the limbs and bags off and took the pears out of the bags and left the bags at the base of the tree. They are greedy they will take them all and store them in the woods and then come out by my pond and eat them at night . Squirrels make a smaller hole and are not near as destructive.
My dad had two pear trees just a few feet away from the edge of the woods in his back yard. Squirrels could jump from near by oaks an hickories to his pear trees.
They started early… when the pears were less than half ripe size… and would slowly wipe them out before any ripened.
Having fruit trees within jumping distance of the woods is a big (comfort plus) for squirrels. Ideal for them. Expect trouble every year from them… it is going to happen.
A couple of pear trees out in the open orchard… say 50 yards from the edge of the woods… would expose the squirrels to more of their natural enimies, hawks, fox, bobcat, owls… as they travel that distance to reach the trees they might just get eaten themselves.
That’s exactly what I see happening to my orchard. Most of my trees are at least 40 or 50 yards from the woods. They are well spaced and I have several hawks that patrol so squirrels are not really much of a problem. However, raccoons at night or an entirely different story. In my area if you don’t have outside dogs, you have raccoons to deal with. I am going to try baffles next year. The bags just aren’t working for raccoons. They seem to love pears more than any other Fruit .
