Keeping birds off the cherries?

[MazdaUK]

I've just checked my cherry tree and once again the pigeons have either knocked down or otherwise removed just about all the cherries, a good 2 weeks before I could hope they might ripen. This is a concerted campaign by the little......birds starting with pecking at the blossom and moving on to pecking the bunches off the tree. Why?

I've tried hanging CDs - that attracted the magpies - and tying bits of plastic bag (red). MIL tied up three bin bags - not attractive. The only thing that works is running out the soor, shouting and clapping.

and apart form the neighbours thinking I'm mad, I work so don't have all day every day to police one tree

Too late for this year but any help planning for next year would be much appreciated - we had a bumper crop 4 years ago and nothing since

TIA

 

[bobbiwoz]

I don't have any answers. The same thing has happened to me, with cherries, blueberries and strawberries. Once I tried netting, but birds, robins, caught their wings in the netting and I just couldn't bear that happening.

For whatever reason, birds do not bother raspberries, and I'm enjoying a bumper crop this year.

Bobbi

 

[Colleen27]

I have dogs, so we don't have bird problems. The older of our pair of labs has been known to get a mouth full of tailfeathers when a bird is a hair too slow in noticing him, and amazingly enough, the birds seem to have learned that our yard is a dangerous place full of snapping dog teeth. My fruit trees are dwarfs, though, and still young. I don't know that they'll be so easily deterred when the goodies are well out of the dogs' reach.