Oh, man. I remember the days of crawling in under the bird netting to pick blueberries on my knees. When we moved several years ago, we fulfilled our dream of building walk-in berry cages over seven feet tall.
The little suns-of-beaches still managed to get in through the walls of bird netting. They would squeeze in, and eventually squeeze out if we didn’t go down and chase them out an open door. This year we hung scare tape from the rafters, and put one of those plastic owls on top the cage. A miracle. Not a single bird seen in the blueberry cage all season. Given all our other garden experiments and ideas, many of which cost a lot but didn’t amount to much, I’m still in awe of how effective and cheap that simple fix was.
We had a banner year in blueberries this year, despite the late start (can’t say the same for strawberries).
Not only are they not entering the cage, they won’t come anywhere near it. Typically all kinds of birds like to sit on the upper rails, but not since the owl was put up. The tape makes a soft rustling noise, which I believe also helps. Of course it doesn’t hurt that we’ve occupied the airspace above the berries (no-fly zone).
We’re going to take the whole operation down in about a week, when the berries are done. We don’t want the birds to become accustomed to it, and we also don’t want to discourage our feathered friends long term, as we usually enjoy watching them (just not watching them eat our berries). We’ll put it all back up again next year when it gets close to harvest.
My wife set things up so that you can just lift the netting to get in–no crawling required. And as bad as the summer has been for blueberries, it’s been equally amazing for the strawberries and the blackberries (plus loganberries, marionberries, olallieberries, etc.).
They work for a while. Might have to move the owl periodically. I had one by my deck to keep them from crapping all over it. When that wore off, we moved the owl to a new spot. The owl works, though.
Whenever I used bird netting I ended up having to unwrap a bird or two from it after I got home from work. Of course, they were terrified and shat madly during the whole process, adding to the fun.
I dread that! I can’t do nets since I even read about it. Right now I’m using this "Guardian " as back up for the organza bags on my figs. We have another one on the front portico ( just learned that word) for the bats.
My husband put an owl staue next to the sliding glass door to keep birds from flying into it. One day I heard a clunk against the glass door, and figured the owl didn’t work. But what happened was a hawk spotted his bitter enemy the owl, attacked it, and knocked it into the door.
I have “The Guardian” you see in the picture, but none of the other products on that website. That company no longer carries it, and I wonder why. I see it elswhere online though, like here ;
And as bad as the summer has been for blueberries, it’s been equally amazing for the strawberries and the blackberries (plus loganberries, marionberries, olallieberries, etc.).