On 4/30/2013 7:27 PM, David Hare-Scott wrote:
Dan Espen wrote:
CherryTree writes:

I have a nice cherry tree in my garden, it has very tasty cherries
every year but... not for long. Every year thousand of birds eat
them all. I erected a dud but this has no effect at all. Are there
any reliable l ways to protect the cherries? Thank you.

Other posters recommend netting.
Seems to me you'd end up with a lot of birds caught in the netting.


You don't usually get trapped birds. This is the system used
commercially including vineyards, without netting there would be no
grape harvest round here. If you don't enclose the tree(s) fully you
might get one or two birds that get underneath and then insist on flying
upwards and so cannot get out but normally you can enclose it and avoid
this. Even so it takes 5 minutes to free them.


D


I've had a bird get around the netting and trapped inside but not
tangled up in it.

OTOH I've found snakes hopelessly tangled in the netting when they tried
to crawl under it. If I had not freed them they would have died.
Fortunately no poison snakes around here and one of the black snakes was
about five feet long.