Casting our Net

Our blueberries are just beginning to ripen and it won't be long before we'll be out around the bushes every afternoon with buckets picking those delicious, healthy berries.  The branches are loaded down with berries.  The weight of the berries have those branches bent over.  Looks like it will be a nice harvest this year.  Except...

Tricia informed me that she's seen many birds flying into the blueberry bushes and helping themselves to our berries.  If that continues that doesn't bode well for our harvest.

We sat on the back patio and watched black birds, mockingbirds, and blue jays swoop in, grab a snack, and fly off.  As if that wasn't rude enough behavior, some of the ungrateful birds even pooped on berries still on the bushes.  That's about as rude as it gets.  So what can we do?

A calling card left by a bird

I had a package containing some garden netting that Tricia and I wrapped around one group of blueberry bushes.  Of course this net doesn't catch the birds.  It just attempts to keep them from getting into the bushes and devouring our berries.

Netting

I'm not sure how effective the net is going to be.  It is 3 feet wide by 50 feet long and despite wrapping it around the trees several times, there were plenty of gaps, allowing the birds to easily fly through the gaps and eat.  I hung a fake snake from the blueberry branches hoping to discourage or scare off the birds.

The fake snake

The jury is out to see if either of those work as a deterrent.  I think that I'll have to mobilize the third option in our arsenal.  I'll get Benjamin to patrol the area with his pellet gun and pick the birds off as they land in the blueberries - the blueberry harvest depends on it.