Birds eating buds - help ! !

Discussion in 'Fruit and Nut Trees' started by galiano, May 18, 2009.

  1. galiano

    galiano Active Member

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    I have a small orchard on our property, about 20 fruit and nut trees all around 4 -5 years old and doing nicely. This year as the flower buds were about to open, I noticed finches landing in the trees and pecking at the buds. They seem to eat half a bud an then move on to the next one. I bought netting at my local hardware and covered each of the trees. This seemed to solve the bird problem but a few weeks later when I felt it was safe, I tried to remove the netting - not so easy. The leaves and branches had grown through the netting and made getting it off almost impossible without cutting it into pieces. Can any of you suggest a better way to deal with my birds eating buds problem ?
     
  2. Liz

    Liz Well-Known Member 10 Years

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    Location:
    Victoria Australia [cool temperate]
    You could try tying old CD's to twine and hanging them in trees or supermarket plastic bags. We use that as a parrot deterrent seems to work to some degree.

    Liz
     
  3. Margaret

    Margaret Active Member 10 Years

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    Sunshine Coast, B C Canada
    In the Okanagan they hang shiny streamers from the trees. I "decorated" my raspberries with strings of Christmas tinsel which worked beautifully and was easy to remove. I agree about the netting as I had an awful job removing it from the grapes and apples. It also caused the branches and vines to grow in strange directions!
    Happy Christmas in May!
    Margaret
     
  4. Barbara Lloyd

    Barbara Lloyd Well-Known Member

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    The only time I ever got cherries on any of three "Bing" trees was the year we found a dead crow beside the road and hung it in the middle tree.
    barb
     
  5. growest

    growest Active Member 10 Years

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    Location:
    Surrey,BC,Canada
    galiano--we have the same problem, with a couple finch nests in the hedging here the birds are constantly dining on the buds of all fruit trees. The only consolation is that the trees are growing each year, and the toll of buds is easier to overlook as the apples, pears and plums all tend to need thinning come June anyway.

    I'm not saying I always let nature harvest her share without a fight...just that the finches no longer seem to be worth fighting here with plenty of buds for everyone :-) On the other hand, the flock of crows that swoops in and picks the ripe cherry tree clean in just a few hours...that's harder to be so "philosophical" and nice about....
     
  6. galiano

    galiano Active Member

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    I have been collecting old CD's from friends and will try hanging them along with a metallic tape I recently bought. Actually if I took down all our bird feeders
    ( not going to happen ) then we would have less of a problem.
     
  7. vitog

    vitog Contributor 10 Years

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    Location:
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    I used to have a similar problem with house finches eating the newly opened flowers of my sweet cherry tree. They were just nipping out the sweet nectary part of the flower and dropping the rest of it on the ground. The ground under the cherry tree was covered with blossoms when the finches were around. But take heart; after a few years of this, the problem diminished and has been non-existent in the last couple of years. I've noticed that lately there seem to be more crows and fewer small birds around to bother my fruit trees. I used to have problems with robins, English sparrows, and starlings, as well as the finches; but all of these problems have been greatly diminished. I suspect that it is due to predation by crows on the young of these smaller birds. The crows seem to be warier than the other birds and don't create as many problems in the garden.

    So, if you're lucky, crows will take over and clear your orchard of the problem finches.
     
  8. galiano

    galiano Active Member

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    We almost never see a crow around our property but we have an abundance of small birds because of all our feeders. I seem to be the architect of my own problem !
     

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