War against the birds. Featured

When I was a kid we had a cherry tree. I remember seeing a pit hanging from the stem after a bird had lunch. We really got very few for ourselves from it.

Peach tree was different. We gave a way bags of them.

How to Keep Birds Off Your Fruit Trees

I had two apple trees, of different kinds, planted by the previous owner, die of cedar apple rust. It's been 10 years but I'm stilll afraid the disease is lingering h ere It also killed the bushes near the door.

I'd like to plan peach trees in their space, but maybe I live too far north and the trees outside my yard, the edge of the woods, have grown a lot bigger since the first owner planted his trees, and I don't think there's enough sun for the trees to do well. Remember it's a small, end-of-group townhouse.

I hope to buy some sweet cherries at the supermarket. LOL and I have to read some but maybe I made a mistake decades ago by taking the bird netting off when the cherry season was over. Because putting it on each year was a pain and since the tree got bigger, it was hard to do. Probably would help to have help.

Maybe I should just leave it on all year and it will work. Web pages say it works although I would think birds could even perch on the net if not branches and eat the cherries though the netting. The holes are iirc almost an inch square. I still have the net in good condition.

Thanks for the video Wannabe. I will read the comments soon. I have that very package** of Irri-tape that he shows, and you can see the strips dangling in the breeze in his video. But I was too late getting out there this year. Last year I had hundreds of cherries and all I used was Tanglefoot. No birds. (Organic, that is, no pesticides. No need to wash them iiuc.) But I've lost two crops to birds so I will do something next year I've had this tree for at least 20 years and never lost a whole crop until these two times. Never noticed robins around here either before.

I also thought about buying an imitation owl -- no good easy place to mount it -- but I had not heard about the two-eyed balloon. When I looked at owls a year ago, I settled on this one,

I guess this is it:

And Amazon has 4 balloons for $20, shipping included, and not even shipped by Amazon. How does Birdbgone hope to compete against that?

micky wrote on 5/26/2024 6:47 AM:

Tanglefoot is mainly for painting around the lower part of tree trunk to prevent insects from climbing up and down your tree.

Check more selection of bird scare balloons and bird scare tapes.

Bird scare balloons:

We had a peach tree in the back yard of a previous house we had purchased in late spring. Our first summer there we had a feast. Never again. In subsequent years the squirrels ruined every single peach on the tree before any of them were ripe. Every peach had one or at the most two bites from a squirrel before they gnawed through the stem, dropping them to the ground where the ants infested what remained. We learned from our neighbors that the previous owners of our house had a dog that lived in a doghouse in the back yard. We are not dog people. Such is life. Just wildlife doing what wildlife does.

Buy these plastic craft sheets to wrap around the tree trunk so that it will be too slippery for the squirrels to climb over the plastic sheet to go up the tree. You might find these sheets in dollar stores at a lower price.

Clear Craft Plastic Sheets, Blank Stencil 18" x 48" 5 Sheets 7.5 mil Strong and Flexible

😎 Mighty Wannabe ✅ wrote on 5/26/2024 3:13 PM:

Thy this if your tree trunk is too thick for plastic craft sheets:

How to Keep Rodents From Climbing your Tree

I have a strip of aluminum flashing hanging vertically on a tree that's close to the bird feeders ... I also have Slinky's around the poles those feeders are mounted on . Endless fun watching them climb up and grab the Slinky . And thud hit the ground .

Squirrels should be taught conservation, so that they eat the entire peach instead of 1 or 2 bites, and then they can save other peaches for humans.

Please contribute to ASESAC. Even a small tax-deductible amount will help.

The American Society to Educate Squirrels about Conservation.

We have to stop that too.

Wait! Wait! Where is the video of 20 ways the squirrels beat the slippery sheet?

When we bought our house 42 years ago it had a good sized cherry tree in the side yard - a bit too close to the house.Technically a sour cheery tree (self polinating) it yeilded large juicy dadk red cherries that were very sweet (was told it was a "European Marachino) Some years we got several bushels of cherries - other years we got none. I made an agreement with the birds they could have the ones I could not reach - but they renaged and fought me for the cherries when I was picking do I cut the top out of the tree every year, dropping the branches to the ground and picking them there. I crawled right up into the middle of the tree as well as picking from ladders. Even cutting out the top every year it was soon taller than our 2 story house, and I kept cutting out lower branches to keep from bumping my head, and for several years so I could back/drive the trailer (Bonair 1690) under the tree to store it in the back yard. Several years ago, after

I had a plastic owl sitting on the chimney next to the tree. The robins sat on it's head and crapped on it. A very realistic looking owl too - - -

When I was a kid, our neighbors had a yard sale, but did not sell their real stuffed owl. My dad got it and put it in the tree, and that was the year we got the most cherries ever. By the next year, the owl had mildewed badly and was disposed.

Thanks for the advice. Unfortunately, it comes 41 years too late. As I said, "We had a peach tree in the back yard of a previous house..." Of course, back then I never had time to ask the question or follow through on any suggestion. I never was into gardening. I had very little free time in those days and preferred to spend it on things I enjoyed much more than sweating in the hot sun, fighting the bees, wasps, mosquitos, poison ivy and occasional copperhead snake. After decades of long hours doing extremely high responsibility work, I'm very fortunate to afford to be fully retired and live in a condo where all exterior and interior maintenance of common property is done by others.

Again, on another previous home, the aluminum flashing on our chimney was a favorite of a local woodpecker, especially in the early hours of the AM before we were fully awake. I used to get a headache as it sounded much louder inside the house than outside. Amazing that the woodpecker didn't get at least a headache if not a concussion.

Some times you just feel like pretending that you're George Washington :-).

Oh, we've been working on that since the industrial revolution. If global warming continues as it's going, in a few hundred years you'll have your wish except there probably won't be any sentient life around to witness it.

If it got him laid, it was probably worth it.