Are birds eating your backyard fruits and berries? While you can get away with sharing some of your harvest with wildlife, birds can wreak havoc on your fruit trees and berry bushes.
To prevent your backyard orchard becoming a bird cafeteria you first need to know the types of birds that love to feast on fruit.
Birds That Cause the Most Damage
Fruit eaters include: crows, grackles, starlings, house finches, house sparrows, and robins. Other species, such as the cedar waxwing, gray catbird, northern mockingbird, blue jay, Baltimore oriole, and even the seagull and wild turkey has also been known to cause significant damage to fruits.
Use a birding field guide to identify birds, or visit a free birding guide from e-nature.com.
Regardless of the type of bird and feeding habit, some general rules apply.
- Juveniles are tough to scare; adults much easier.
- Preventing feeding problem is easier than stopping it, once a pattern has developed.
- Incorporating multiple methods, and changing them frequently is usually more effective than relying on one repellent method.
- The effectiveness of a particular method varies among species.
- Flocking birds generally easier to scare away than resident families or pairs.
- Most birds can be scared away by a predator, such as a dog or cat.
Methods for Reducing Bird Damage to Your Crop
There are several methods to stop birds from feeding: Repellent methods -- which include sound, visual and chemical -- and netting.
Visual Scare Tactics
Some inexpensive visual scare tactics include used CDs, streamers, spinners, and aluminum pans. But to be effective, these devices need to be moved around every couple of days. However, newer products on the market offer more changeability using wind or holography, which startles birds. These are products such as Irri-Tape a sparkling ribbon that makes metallic sounds as it blows in the wind, and TerrorEyes, a balloon with holographic “eyes” that move with the bird’s movements.
Acoustical Repellents
The most well-known electronic sound device, called the AV Alarm, makes a warbling sound that interferes with the bird’s sensory system, making the birds nervous and unable to communicate with one another. One of the newest types of sound devices emit distress calls of various species of birds which has the benefit of not only signaling to the birds that they must leave, but has the added benefit of also attracting birds of prey – such as hawks – who think the distress calls are real. These birds of prey circling your yard are an added insurance to keep the feeding birds away.
Chemical Repellents
There are several safe chemical repellents that can be used; the most commonly used is methyl anthranilate, sold under the trade names of ReJex-iT and Bird Shield, an almost colorless liquid with a grape-like odor and taste, which birds do not like. These products have been approved for use in the food and drug industry for many years as a flavoring for humans (used in products such as in grape soda), and is currently registered for use on fruits.
Enclosure Methods
While netting is the best way to make sure that birds do not eat your crop – and is the most successful – it is also the most expensive in terms of materials and labor. But, properly done, the materials and support structure can last many seasons. Overhead netting is effective for blueberries, dwarf sweet cherries or wine grapes. However, nets must be removed at the end of the season and stored away in order to prevent them from becoming damaged by the winter elements.
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