"Heather Edwards" writes:
John, do you think this would work for bats too? They eat all the fruit off
my tree and mess all over my car its a problem every year. Given bats are
blind of course and rely on a sonor system. Heather.

Hello Heather. Most insectivorous bats use sonar, but the flying foxes
have excellent eyesight and can see in even dim moonlight. I think they
don't even have sonar. You could try the snakes, perhaps paint them a
light colour, or use a fluorescent paint. Whether snakes are successful may
depend on whether the bats have ever encountered predatory tree snakes. My
feeling is that it probably won't scare them--for the simple reason that
1000s of orchardists would surely be using rubber snakes if it was known
to work. But why not give it a try, anyway? I wonder would an owl be a
deterrent to bats? The advantage of using an owl in your tree is that it
looks wooden at the best of times, so an immobile bird would not seem
unnatural.

Have you considered spraying one half of your tree with DeTer? If effective,
this might restrict the bats to the other half and they'd at least leave you
the fruit on one half. Or try wrapping figs or bunches of figs in their own
individual little nylon netting bags.

I expect DeTer can be used on fruit crops, but it might mean that you have
to peel the fruit if you don't like the taste. Anyone actually tried it on
edible crops?
--
John Savage (for email, replace "ks" with "k" and delete "n")