10:53 am: Bird Control Ideas
Q: In your book on Organic Grape growing, you mention spraying sucrose solution onto grapes to deter bird damage. The local catbirds, etc., have removed most (but not all-some are not yet ripe) of my Marechal Foch crop -25 vines worth-and I need all the help I can get here .I know they are already eying my Chambourcin grapes, not to mention the table grapes! What percent sugar solution can you suggest?
A: The sucrose method was mentioned largely to make readers aware of other possibilities. The exact concentration wasn't given, but from the reference it suggests that a solution would be to use as much sugar as would dissolve in cold water - abbout like light syrup.
Meantime, here are comments from other growers you might find useful'
---------------
"I grow grapes in Kentucky commercially and what I am about to say is not popular but is a reality of life in farming. We have many species of song bird, mockingbirds, crows etc. Due to people in suburban areas putting out feeders many of these species no longer migrate they just stay the winter in KY anymore. What this has led to is over population of many bird species. It also has led many of these species to become more aggresive of their pursuit of fruit crops, with them knowing their territory much better. I had the same experience for two season in a row, netted, put out scare devices nothing kept my crop from being damaged or completely destroyed. The situation gave me no choice, (was loosing thousands of dollars), but to go buy two things a high caliber air rifle and a 22 cal rifle with bird shot. A good quality air rifle will allow you to start exterminating the most aggressive ones in the flock. Bottom line is once they get a taste for your
fruit, the same birds will return day after day and year after year. And they bring others with them their offspring. The other measure I can give you is to take a look at your trellis design and make sure you have "spreaders" that keep the nets at adequate distance so the birds cannot push the netting into the fruit zone. The birds were so aggressive here in KY that even with netting and closing all the holes they would literally grab the netting with their claws and flap wings vigorously push inward and peck throught the netting to get at the fruil. This did severe damage to the fruit, caused most of the berries to fall off the bunches on the floor below the canopy. The birds didn't get much fruit to eat themselves with this but I didn't get any fruit either. So I started getting up early in the morning with my air rifle and started taking alot of them out. Hang the dead ones from a string or stick at the edges of the vineyard. Birds have very
good eye sight they can see this. If anybody calls you a bird brain you should take that as a big compliment, cause birds are very intelligent and they learn how to adapt quickly to any mitigation measure you put out. Remember birds are descendants of dinosaurs and have had over 65 million years of adaptation. Bird remember when there is danger and they choose not to return to danger guarantee kill a few and watch them stop coming. I know what I have written is cruel but in KY farmers are aloud by law to call wild life that is destroying crops. Mockingbirds are very intelligent birds and very aggessive., short of killing them you might as well hang it up my friend. Anybody that tells you otherwise ,Good Luck"
--------------
"A thought on airborn preditors......
Icelandic Sheepdogs protect the flock from airborn preditors by instinct.
Airborn preditors are the only preditors in Iceland.
I expect they would happily spend their days chasing off birds that plan to
attack the fruit. Of course they use their voice to defend, iow bark, so the
neighbors may not approve if any are close. Luckily though the airborn
raiders are only out during the day so they could go off duty overnight.
I wonder if they could be a part of an effective multifaceted defense
system?"
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=91.7){kind=small}
