Bird Poo or a fungus on blackcurrant bush?

[TrialAndError]

A friend of mine asked me comment on some white marks on her blackcurrant bush. The pics below illustrate it. There are lots of them on the stems of the bush. At first bird poo was thought to be the cause but I'm not so sure. The marks appear almost (but not quite) exclusively on the stems. Any thoughts to help us?

[Martin H]

This is blackcurrant scale insect. If there aren't too many you can just squish them with your fingers.

[FB.]

Yes, scale 'insects'.
They will colonise a wide range of plants and don't seem to cause much harm to healthy plants.
Natural predators usually keep them under control - unless you use sprays.

[TrialAndError]

Thanks for the id, much appreciated.

[BUFFS]

speaking of birds on blackcurrants, yesterday my wife went into he garden as a blackbird was eating the fruit, she waved her arms and stood less than 3ft from it and it just looked highly offended at being disturbed and only moved when she stretched her hand out, less than a foot away, it sat on the nearby wall,4/5ft away, twitching his tail but not flying away and we had a standoff for about 2mins before my wife came in and he went back to eating and I hadn't the heart to move him on as he went into a large clematis before returning, so that's the third nest in that 10mtr growth, it looks like I will have to buy some netting next year as we seem to be getting more visitors than the "spare" fruit can support..