Keeping birds out of the berries
--- I've forgotten who posted this question, but someone did a few weeks ago
We don't generally have problems with birds
in the strawberries. (In the photo above, the cardinal is
actually stealing some buckwheat seeds that weren't adequately
covered by straw.) However, I've noticed a lot of bird
activity in the black raspberries, and a minimal amount of damage
to the red raspberries.
I don't know why the
blacks are preferred --- perhaps just because they're small enough
for a bird to easily gulp down, or the higher proportion of seeds
makes them more nutritious. But even with lots of birds
eating, we've been getting quite a good harvest.
I may change my tune
when our blueberries come into full production, but so far, I
don't net any of our berries or worry too much about bird
predation. There's so much wild food around that our berries
are just a side dish for them, and a main crop for us.
In the meantime, I've
noticed phoebes picking cabbage worms off the broccoli and have
even noticed a cardinal swooping down to catch an insect in
midair. (I'm well aware that cardinals are supposed to be
obligate seed- and fruit-eaters, but clearly they don't know
that.) So, in the long run, having birds in our garden is a
net plus.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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I really, really, really hate Japanese crows. They sit on the power lines and watch me. They are studying which plants I am taking care of. Seriously. Then when I have to leave the garden to go to work or have dinner, they swoop down and purposely damage what I have been doing. If they actually ate the produce, it wouldn't be so bad. But they are like a gang of teenage vandals. Twenty pumpkins- all will have just enough peck holes to ruin the fruit. Watermelons- the same. Not eaten, just ruined. Tomatoes- I didn't pick the first one until late August, when the 20 plants I had finally outstripped even the crows ability to destroy them. I hate crows with a passion that rivals my hatred of wild boars. Maybe even exceeds it, since the boars are mainly autumn pests, while crows are year round. My neighbor swears by killing a crow and hanging it up from a pole in your garden. I asked him how to get one- he just smiled. "When I figure that part out...." he said. He's 90 by the way. I reduced my garden to a 6x6m square with fine net over the top. It looks silly in the middle of all that field, with only a 6x6 parcel. But so far the crows are not in it. So far... I think they are just waiting for something they see me paying extra close attention to. Then comes the reverse jailbreak.