My Useless Fake Owl

September 26th, 2017

   I generally like birds. Sure, they poop on the patio table and sometimes crash into windows, but they eat enough bugs and look and sing pretty enough to make up for it.

This fake owl didn’t scare birds away from eating my blackberries.

   Where I draw the line, though, is at the berry bushes. I like fresh blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, and blackberries even more than bird songs, so I get a little perturbed when the birds beat me to the harvest.

   I wouldn’t mind if they ate a few. I can share. But if I don’t protect my bushes, I wouldn’t get a single ripe fruit.

   I know that because I experimented one year. I didn’t cover my blueberry bushes with netting, and the birds ate every last berry off of my seven bushes. Every one.

   The next year I tried hanging old CDs all around the bushes. The motion and reflection scared them off, I read.

   That also failed. My wife got a picture of a fearless feathered friend sitting atop a CD-adorned pole, as if it appreciated the decoration for dinner.

   So I went back to netting with its usual troubles of birds pecking holes in it and sneaking underneath.

   This year I had one of my best blueberry harvests ever, thanks to a pack of Premium Bird Netting I bought through the Gurney’s Nursery and Seed Co.

   It was expensive – $70 for a 28-by-28-foot pack – but it should last for years. I figure I got at least $70 worth of blueberries this summer alone.

   Which brings me to the fake owl. I heard and read that plastic decoy owls act as scarecrows for birds. Mount one and birds supposedly fear that an owl is policing the area. So they go somewhere else.

   I shelled out $9.97 for one at Lowe’s. Reviews on the Lowe’s website claimed the “Great Horned Owl Scarecrow Bird Repellent Decoy” worked great. Seventy percent of the reviews gave it either four or five stars.

   Figuring this would be cheaper and easier than netting, I mounted my fake owl on a pole in the middle of my blackberry bushes.

   What a joke. Birds ate almost every blackberry as soon as they got close to ripening. I got a handful – all from down in the bushes where the birds probably couldn’t see them.

   My hunch is that the lure of ripe berries is so great to a bird that they’re either willing to take the owl risk or they watch long enough that they learn the whole thing is a desperate-gardener ruse.

   When I read more of the Lowe’s reviews, I found that most of the positive reviews were by people who were just trying to keep birds off the windows and away from the patio.

   Apparently, birds looking for berries is a whole different story when it comes to fake owls.

   I’m sticking with the Premium Bird Netting.

   If you’re having trouble with animals eating your harvest, check out my new post on ways to combat the voles, deer, rabbits, groundhogs and such. The article is in the Mayhem in the Garden section of my website’s Storage Shed.