I suppose I did get one

[galadhir]

I was absolutely determined to get a cherry from the cherry tree this year. It produced loads of little green cherries, and I swathed it in bird netting as soon as they began to change colour. But then...

During the summer I had made friends with a blackbird in the garden who had a ring of white spots where the jaw would be on a person. I called him Spot, and he would swoop down from wherever he was perching as soon as I went into the garden, and hop about my feet, while I talked to him.

Spot had a nest in the wisteria, where he raised a brood of little cheeping baby blackbirds along with Mrs Spot. And soon the baby blackbirds were scruffy looking juveniles scurrying about the garden with even less fear of me than Spot had.

The babies would come close enough to me to touch, while Spot sat on the fence nearby and watched, and I was delighted and honoured to be treated as trustworthy.

But then the babies started to get into the bunched up netting at the base of the cherry tree. I had to go out and scare one off before it got its foot caught. That was the point I started thinking 'maybe I should take the net off. I don't need the cherries. I can't get Spot's babies killed.'

But I didn't do anything, because that one cherry had begun to go pink, and I'd had zero cherries last year from this tree I had planted because cherries are my favourite fruit - the birds had had them all.

Two weeks later, the cherry was almost ripe, and one of the babies had got themselves properly tangled. I went out and - while Spot and the baby both screamed at me - I untangled it and it scrambled off, cursing. And that was the end. I ate that one cherry while it was still not-quite-ripe and then took down the netting from the cherry tree, so the birds would be able to eat all the others without risking their lives.

At that point, I still had netting on the raised bed where the blueberries were ripening. But as soon as Mrs. Spot got off her eggs, she started making her way under the netting, eating the blueberries and then panicking because she couldn't find her way out. That was when I christened her Berrythief.

I couldn't have Berrythief getting tangled in netting either, so I took that down too. So that was the end of my blueberry harvest.

Not very encouraging results from my plans to feed myself from the garden!

OTOH, Spot has recently started coming down to walk with me again - so I feel forgiven for giving the baby such a fright. And Berrythief has decided the raised bed is the best place to go hunting, and has earned the name Berrythief Slugsbane for her ruthless consumption of the damned gastropods that keep eating every leafy vegetable that I plant in there.

Birds 2: Fruit 0

Otoh, I do have a shop nearby where I can get frozen blueberries and cherries, and money can't buy the friendship of a family of blackbirds. I think I'm ahead on the deal.

Comments

[mistressofmuses]

It sounds like a bit of a fair trade, getting the sweet little blackbird family. I agree you came out ahead!

But ugh, the house I grew up in had a pear tree that we never got a single pear off of, so I feel your pain. The squirrels would go up and pick every single one, take a bite, and throw the rest away because they weren't ripe. It was so annoying! Lol.
(But I deeply miss the peach tree, the apple trees, the plums, and the black raspberries that we did get fruit from fairly reliably.)

[galadhir]

I think so :) And maybe when both the tree and the bushes get a little larger there might be a few left over for me.

Ugh. I have a couple of pear trees too, which I planted last year. One of them has a pear on it that I'm watching narrowly. But both trees are looking quite sickly and I'm contemplating replacing one or both with apples. I'll have to see what happens there. Everything is very young in the garden - they were all put in about a year ago - and it may be that I'm expecting too much too soon.

[watervole]

Have you tried top-dressing around the pear trees with garden compost? (or the old urine trick)

[galadhir]

I did compost around them last winter, but I probably should have done again in the spring. And argh, I keep forgetting the urine thing, though I did buy myself a bucket last year for the purpose :) Thanks!

[watervole]

My husband had been forgetting the urine on our tomatoes and basil (bit stressed out by the amount of crap on the patio from pigeons nesting under the solar panels - now fenced out and moved elsewhere)

In just two days of added urine, the basil went from yellow and dying, to the leaves turning green again and the whole plant perking up.

The tomato leaves are greening up as well, and I'm hoping they'll produce better flowers now.

[galadhir]

Ooh, that's a thought. I seem to have problems keeping basil alive when it's outside. (I have different problems keeping it alive when I move it inside for the winter.) I might try that for the outdoor stage. I've put some on my trees without any visible effect, but then trees are not very expressive. I probably won't find out what they think about it until next year.

[watervole]

I'm so glad you decided to let Spot and family have the fruit!

It would have been heart-breaking if one of the babies had died.

So far, we've had no problems with out fruit cage on the allotment - but they're a lot more expensive than netting.

I saw some birds caught inside someone else's fruit cage where a door hadn't been properly closed - though they were at least not starving.... (We managed to get them out eventually)

[galadhir]

Yes, exactly. I couldn't have lived with myself, especially as I'm not in any way starving without the fruit. I think I just need to pin the netting down more firmly in future, and make sure any excess is shoved inside rather than outside the enclosure, but a frame for the netting around the tree sounds like a good plan.

I've been told that the squirrels will have my hazlenuts too. I didn't realize that I was actually planting all this food entirely to feed the wildlife, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.