Newsgroups: aus.gardens,rec.gardening.edible

On his tv gardening program, Peter Cundall described one viewer's
successful ruse against birds eating his persimmons. Well before the
fruit became coloured, the gardener bought a lot of realistic-looking
orange-coloured artificial persimmons and hung them all over his tree.
Birds descended on the tree expecting the usual feast, but this time
found every orange-coloured fruit impenetrable! Undoubtedly they gave
the fruit a good going over, as evidenced by areas where the paint had
been determinedly pecked off. Eventually the birds gave up on trying to
eat the orange fruit, so by the time the green fruit matured and turned
orange the birds were paying the tree no attention. The tree's owner
reported that in the past the birds had taken all his persimmons, but so
successful has been the ornamental fruit that this year no persimmons
were lost to birds!

The ornamental fruit was white under the paint, but I couldn't decide
whether they were china or styrofoam. The same idea might be worth a try
for other fruit crops, I suppose. I wonder do flying foxes home in on
fruit because of its colour alone, or would odour come into play also;
otherwise you might be saving fruit from birds only to lose it to the
bats.

I'm referring here the (Australian) ABC's weekend tv gardening program.
--
John Savage (my news address is not valid for email)

John Savage wrote:

I wonder do flying foxes home in on
fruit because of its colour alone, or would odour come into play also;
otherwise you might be saving fruit from birds only to lose it to the
bats.


Just a guess here, John but I would think that bats being nocturnal and
having fairly poor eyesight would probably be more attracted to odour.
So if that's the case, you're right - you'd save them from birds only to
feed bats.

Maybe bats don't like persimmons or more likely they were grown in an
area where there aren't many bats. Again, I'm guessing, I don't know.

L.