My goal is to see birds as garden teammates — as they eat insects that can be pests, such as aphids — and not as enemies as they peck the fruit on my trees. As far as my experience goes, the best way to accomplish this is to prevent birds from access to the fruit.
I’ve found two forms of protection to work well: bagging and netting.
Bagging
If a fruit tree is large or if there isn’t too much fruit on a tree, then bagging individual fruit or small clusters of fruit is effective and economical.
I’ve used mesh produce bags, like this one from Earthwise that is protecting a bunch of grapes:
Here is a cluster of pluots that I protected with one mesh bag:
I’ve also “bagged” fruit using swatches of breathable fabric held together with clothespins. Here are a couple peaches protected like that:
Netting
The other effective protection I’ve used is netting, but I’ve never used the nets that are actually sold for that purpose. Those nets have mesh so large that the net gets snagged on the ends of branches too easily. And if you leave the nets on, branches will grow through them.
I like to use tulle fabric. Specifically, I buy “Economy Colored Polyester Tulle in Bolts” from Papermart, and I buy a bolt 108 inches wide by 50 yards long, which costs around ten dollars. This bolt has enough fabric to protect the fruit of dozens of trees.
Sometimes I just wrap branches or sections of trees, like this Blenheim apricot:
Obviously, some fruit is still vulnerable to bird pecking so I do this only if the crop is huge and I don’t mind losing some.
If the tree is small enough, I often wrap the whole thing, as with this Pink Lady apple:
I do the same with blueberry bushes:
I use rocks to hold down the tulle fabric around the blueberry bushes whereas I fasten the tulle fabric around branches or whole trees with clothespins. It’s easy to poke your arm into the seams of this tulle wrap in order to harvest fruit without having to remove the netting.
(I use the same tulle fabric to protect my vegetables from rabbits. See “Protecting vegetables and fruit trees from rabbits.”)
Reflective strips?
One thing that I haven’t found effective is hanging reflective strips in a tree. When I did this in a Fuji apple tree the birds continued to peck the fruit at the same rate as before.
One of the kinds of birds I’ve got pecking my fruit is the scrub jay. Scrub jays are smart. I can’t imagine them having been deterred by a reflective strip for more than twenty seconds.
Other pests
Finally, while the bags and nets have proven very effective at keeping birds from pecking the fruit of my trees and grapevines and blueberry bushes, these nets do not stop certain other critters. Rats and possums will chew right through these bird barriers and then consume the fruit. You’ve got to deal with competition from those animals in other ways. But I suppose that’s a topic for another post.
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I tried the mesh over my little tress. Was 100% not worth the trouble and I don’t think it saved a single fruit. The thin plastic mesh got caught on all the new little branches and then eventually new growth grew through the mesh making it nearly impossible to remove once fruit was gone. My only hope is that once my trees are mature and set loads of fruit I will not be so disappointed at sharing a few fruits with the birds.
I cover my blueberry bushes with tulle. It works great to keep the birds from eating the berries.
Thank you so much for sharing that, Jennifer. I hadn’t known the name of that material as tulle, but that seems to be the ideal size of netting for the purpose of excluding birds. I just bought some and I’m going to experiment with using it to protect my late season apples (and maybe next year’s blueberries).
This is such a timely post Greg! Thank you! I bought some bags on Amazon and they came overnight! I covered all my nectaplums, peaches and plums. My problem want birds, it was Japanese Beetles. They were swarming the fruit! Now they are gone! Thank you!!
Hi Renee,
So glad to hear they worked for beetles too. So glad to hear that.
I used to think that I needed three times as much fruit on the tree as I could actually eat (some for me, some for the birds and bugs, and some to fall on the ground). I’m pretty sure I need to up that to four times as much as I need after seeing what the birds and bugs can do. As for the Japanese beetles; we’ve had the fewest this year of any year and I’m pretty certain it’s because our chickens free range our whole back yard and eat up all the grubs.
I’ve been wondering the same thing about chickens and green fruit beetles and other insect pests. We have very few of them, and I too suspect it’s because of the chickens’ roaming under the trees and eating grubs throughout the year.
My daughter sent me an assortment of mesh bags to use on my fruit. I have fig beetles that attack my tomatoes peaches and figs. I put a bag over some figs, but I did not seal it completely and they found a way in, so I had a bag of beetles. A little Sevin spray and they were history, but of course the figs were history also. I tried again, but the rats chewed a hole in the bag and stole the figs. The rats go crazy for the Cherimoyas too, so there was no sense in putting a mesh bag on them. Next year I’m going to try aluminum window screen in the size of the large fruit and see if the rats won’t bother with it, although I know they can chew through aluminum mesh. I have a couple of other ideas I’ll share after I try them. The bags keep out the bugs, but not the rats.
Hi Richard,
Good point. I don’t have rats that cause problems, but a possum did chew into a couple mesh bags on my peach tree last summer. The bags keep out the birds, but not the possums.
Was just wondering if Pi tens would work the same they’re not my fruit trees I’m just taking care of them
Hi Marvin,
Not sure. I’ve never tried pie tins, but I do know that most scare tactics like that only tend to work for a short while — maybe they’ll work long enough to save some harvest though.
How about the solar sonar things?
What about the semi-transparent white cloth used for frost Protection in the spring? Is that too heavy for summer? Does it let everything ripen?
I have the same question… protects really well but I wonder if the berries ae getting enough sun to ripen properly!?
It seems that if birds see the fruit that they will just peck thru the mesh. Do you find this not to be the case?
Hi Norm,
Yes, I’ve seen this happen. The mesh really only protects the fruit that is deeper inside of the canopy.
New to Apple trees here. Does sun need to get in? I have linen bags but they are more opaque than the tulle but some light will get in.
Hi Geri,
Sun doesn’t need to get in, but if it doesn’t then the apples won’t color in the same way as they do in the sun.