Hi everyone,
We have a bunch of gardens where I live, and among the things we grow are various grains and types of berry. We love eating what we grow, but unfortunately, so do the birds (especially Blue Jays.) I was wondering, does anyone have experience preventing birds from eating these types of crop, without harming the birds? Two effective solutions (for protecting the crops) we've employed in the past are netting and farm cats. The former is a huge amount of work to set up and take down each year, and the latter obviously results in the birds being scared away and eaten, so I'd love to hear of any bird-friendly alternatives. I sure wish scarecrows actually worked!
Thanks!
Honestly nothing works really efficiently, but we've had some luck protecting our blueberries with realistic owl figures - unfortunately bluejays are in that group of birds that includes crows -the Corvids, that are extremely intelligent, so they rapidly learn whether something is a real threat or not. The second thing that has worked temporarily are fluttering reflective strips of tape or wrapping paper, something shiny and waterproof. The trick is to rotate your "scare" items because they do learn rapidly
The commercial blueberry growers near us just let them have their fill but of course they have acres of bushes! Good luck.
