Problem With Birds!

Ah yes, Chateau le Merde '04!!! Hanging aluminum pie pans on strings so they blow about is one method; also, buy a large rubber snake or two, or an inflatable owl. Move the snake and owl occasionally as the birds get used to them. Good luck!

Gary

The simplest and only way to protect your grapes 99% from birds is by using bird netting. All other methods are only partially successful and you would need to incorporate several together and change them regularly.

Joe

Joe is talking about bird poop on his grapes. Joe...the best thing is to have the tree cut down and this will give the grapes more sun. But, I understand if you don't want to go to the expense of that or if you like the tree. I live in the middle of 4 acres of trees. For years Grackles nested in these trees...hundreds of them. We used to go out right at twilight, about the time the birds roosted for the night, and hit a tree trunk with a

2x4 board...make a real loud sound. This would scare the h. out of the birds and cause mass confusion. They would all fly away. Try this repeatably and see if you can encourage the birds to find another home.

Also, if you can get a few crows to visit they will rid your yard of any other bird species. But they like grapes and you will need the bird netting. Being a farmer is tough isn't it.

Bill Frazier Olathe, Kansas USA

Thanks everyone for your replies, both serious and not! I probably have a smaller vineyard than ANY OF YOU - (6 Chambourcin vines, 10 Norton/Cynthiana vines, and one Catawba vine). My lifetime goal is to grow enough grapes to make one 5 gallon batch of wine! (Of course, the likelihood of this happening is about the same as me winning the Lottery).

Gary

It depends on the type of bird. I've had good luck with a nice pellet rifle and some patience. The grackles around here are pretty feisty though. On the advice of the humane society I started capturing the grackles' young and putting them in the freezer. Apparently it is a humane way to kill them and the parents will never come back.

Andrew

Gary wrote:

I've heard shooting them and then clipping their bodies to a guide wire with a clothespin gets the message across pretty well...........

chuckle chuckle... re the Merde...

a few year back my Dad bought me a 6 in high plastic owl with a motion sensor in it. when anything moves.... "WHO WHOOO" came bird season the next fall.. I set the owl on top of one of the posts.. and went off to the gazebo for dinner.. we came back an hour later only to find the owl on the ground... I set it back on the post.. out of the trees comes woody woodpecker. the large paliated red headed one we have... he dive bombed the owl off the post and attacked it on the ground... whooo whooo whooo whooo.... until I rescued the owl..... True story... since then we net the vines with black netting. some here use white and some black... I dont know why the difference.. I find this works for most preditors ..racoons and most birds.. (although the robins still like to get caught under it) This year we had loits of wasps.. they got a lot of grapes as they get through the net..

cheers Marv . on sunny Salt Spring Island BC

LOL!!! Good one, eh?

Wow. Guess I ought to be glad I'm a mainly store-bought juice kinda guy, ythough I can use blueberries in any quantity. We have bushes here.

Get a .22 rifle, buy the low velocity shells, they aren't =nearly= as loud as the usual ones, and kill whatever gets in yer way and hang the carcass up as a warning to other would be sneak thieves....

How big is that island? I'm on Roanoke Island, NC, USA, 350km due east of Raleigh, NC. Roanoke Island is very small, 10km X 3km. This is the home of the "Mother Vine", the =original= Scuppernong grape vine in North America discovered by colonists in 1584. It still produces hundreds of kg of fruit a year. They grow wild all over the island. I must have 50 in my yard. Bob<