Flipping birds!!

[Curvy Vixen]

Well, I'm trying to trudge through the lack of knowledge, the bad weather, the coachload of slugs that are holidaying in Portarlington...and then I went home yesterday and the flipping birds have eaten my apples!!!!

I have a Bramley cooking apple tree that has had fruit on it for a long time but due to the weather the fruit has all been small and unripe and they've started to come on a bit in the last couple of weeks. I've been debating on 'harvesting' them in the last couple of days and yesterday the birds got there before me About a third of them are half gone!

Am I the only one who has had this Alfred Hitchcock phenomenon???

[valmarg]

I'm amazed that the birds have been taking your Bramleys. I know birds are not supposed to be able to taste anything, but I would have thought that Bramleys would be far too sour for them. The only sign we have of birds eating the windfalls is where they have been bruised on falling to the ground, and they have been eating the bruised part of the apple.

Personally, I think Bramleys will take another six to eight weeks before they are ready to harvest.

valmarg

[kentvegplot]

I have every sympathy. I lost the vast majority of the 'Discovery' apples to birds...they started pecking them, then the wasps got in.

So far they haven't tried any of the other varieties, although the 'James Grieve' is ripe and so is another (mystery) tree.

[Polly Fouracre]

You are not alone! If I'm not quick I lose soft fruit,grapes and apples(including cookers) to the blackbirds.
I don't begrudge them a share but they don't know when to stop!!
I have found toy snakes to be very effective,get them from car boot sales etc.Plastic ones,fluffy ones,I dare say one could make them from rope etc.
The thing to do is to move them a little each day.Curl them 'round branches,have them rearing up under bushes.As long as they are snake-shaped the birds will give them a wide berth.
Then I dare say you will feel sorry for them and put out half-rotted fruit,Tesco Value mixed dried fruit etc.

[Curvy Vixen]

Polly I feed them all the time (well not too much in the summer but I grow slugs especially for them then!) that's the comical bit about it! And the tables where I feed them from are nowhere near the pots with the trees in.

I had never heard of this before but I was saying it in work the other day and instead of looking at me strangely people were nodding like it was something normal

My hubby said the same thing about the taste valmarg and I had to get the label from the tree to prove they were cooking Bramleys! And they ate their way through loads, not just one peck and they were gone!

Apples are in a pot now with blackberries on their way to being a crumble!