Decorate your tree with tinsel. Birds won’t go near it.
I have had success by making a mobile using blank CDs and putting that in my garden amongst my fruit trees. It has worked very well so far, which is gong on two years now.
I drove a 1/2-inch metal conduit into the soil about two feet with the top end sitting about six feet above the ground. Then I used #10-gauge galvanized wire to make a support arm that mounted/slid down into the top of the conduit. The support arm was then bent horizontally away from the conduit with the end of it about 18-inches from the conduit. I bent a small hook into the end of the support arm.
Then used another piece of #10-gauge wire about 14-inches long and hung CDs from each end (2 each, back-to-back) of the cross wire with their reflective sides facing out. To hang the CDs from I bent a small hook at each end of the cross-arm.
The CDs were hung from the cross-wire and the cross wire was hung from the support arm. All were hung using a suitable length of monofilament fishing line so everything would rotate and spin in the lightest breeze, casting moving reflections on the ground all around the garden area anytime the sun is out.
With the CDs being reflective on both sides there are as many as four spots of light gliding across the ground at the same time. Those gliding spots seem to keep both the birds and the squirrels away from my fruit trees. I am guessing that they think its some hawk gliding around reconnoitering for a meal and so keep clear of my plants.
And so far the birds don't seem to have become used to all the reflective spots gliding around. Keeping my fingers X-ed that they continue to be leery of those reflections.
The only maintainence on my garden mobile has been to replace any of the CDs if they have started showing any water damage from the summer rainstorms. The CDs generally have lasted these two years now before one or two of them started to lose reflectivity from water seeping in between the plastic layers. But it's cheap, quick, and easy to replace them when that happens.
OK – Hope that this will be useful for helping to keep squirrels and birds away from y'all's fruit trees. (Hey – I live in the South, y'all, okay?)
Cheers!
Paul M.
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