Birds can quickly become annoying pests, especially in the summer months. And if you happen to be growing blueberries, birds can be very destructive. Sometimes, they won’t even eat the whole fruit; they may, instead, simply take little nibbles right when the crop ripens. This can be particularly aggravating. Bird proofing with Hawk Decoys can help.
While insects and diseases are not likely to cause problems with most plantings, birds regard blueberries as a great summer snack. The fruit ripens over a three-week period and without proper bird proofing measures, birds have been known to eat the entire crop of a small planting. In larger plantings, one can expect yield losses of 10 percent or more. Birds are most problematic during harvest, especially when the fruits first turn blue and grow increasingly robust with sugar content.
Depending on the weather and the surrounding food supply, many birds will have a field day with blueberries. In dry years, birds will eat more aggressively, especially if there are few insects to eat (thanks to the insecticides you used to prevent bugs from eating your blueberries). In the absence of effective bird control, some birds can quickly wipe out an entire blueberry patch. It depends on the bird.
How Different Birds Attack Blueberries
Different bird species will damage blueberries in varying degrees. Larger birds will consume the entire berry while smaller birds will peck at fruit to cause puncture damage.
Blueberries are most often attacked by starlings, grackles, robins and orioles.
Starlings will invade blueberry plantings in large numbers and feed on fruit by eating them whole, puncturing the fruit with their claws. These birds typically number in flocks of 50 to 500. Robins will also eat blueberries whole and will knock other ripe fruit off the plant while foraging for food. Finches will peck at blueberries, causing damage to many berries on the plant, but will not remove fruit. Red-winged blackbirds will feed on berries when they are in season, concentrating mostly on the seeds. Grackle, robin and oriole populations vary from field to field and their numbers will depend on how many nests they’ve created around a blueberry field. Bird proofing with Hawk Decoys will keep pest birds away from your blueberries.
As we’ve seen, birds damage blueberries a number of ways. They eat the entire fruit; they rip and tear at the ripped berries, resulting in partially eaten fruit that must be discarded; and they add to the damage by causing juice from half eaten berries to cover good berries, creating a medium for mold growth. To make matters worse, birds are known to be carriers of salmonella, so the juice from half eaten berries can actually contaminate the good fruit.
There are all sorts of ways to keep birds out of your garden. Some are very effective, some are inhumane and others simply don’t get the job done. What follows is a tried and true bird control measure that is both effective and humane. Keep in mind that using a number of bird control measures in tandem is usually more effective than any single deterrent.
The Hawk Decoy
Most birds get really nervous around hawks. And for good reason. These imposing birds are very territorial, protecting their areas with tenacity and skill. Other birds know this and will avoid their perceived territory. The simple truth is, bird proofing with Hawk Decoys can save your blueberries from being attacked.
So it follows that if you strategically position a realistic looking hawk in your garden, most birds will stay away. The keys to this bird control measure are “realistic-looking” and “position.” Both must be considered in order for this method to be effective.
For starters, it pays to get a hawk decoy that looks real. So try to get a decoy that’s made of heavy duty plastic, and one that has hand-painted life-like features. Also, make sure you get a red-tailed hawk, as Red tails are known to hunt during the day. And be sure you get a quality decoy, one that stays looking real after it’s been watered on and exposed to months of sunlight and inclement weather.
Positioning is also important. Pest birds need to see the decoy clearly, and they need to believe that it’s alive and waiting to pounce on them. That means you need to put it where birds tend to flock, and to move it around from time to time. This helps convince pest birds that there might be more than one hawk guarding your blueberries, and that the predators are on the lookout for them. Some decoys are hollow, so you can fill them with sand for added stability. This is a handy feature if you need to set them in a place where wind or sprinklers might knock them over.
You can also use a rope or twine to hang your hawk decoys from trees or eaves. Some decoys have a hole at the top (this is another handy feature). Also remember to move the decoy around every couple of days at first. This ensures that any pest birds considering your blueberries for a meal won’t get the idea that the decoys are just an inanimate piece of plastic. After all, birds are not dummies.
If your blueberry plants are heavily infested with pest birds, you many need to add other pest bird devices to your hawk decoy efforts such as bird netting.
Alex Kecskes is a freelance writer focusing on humane bird control. To learn more about the products listed in this article, please visit http://www.absolutebirdcontrol.com
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