Are birds more active with berry picking after they have an empty nest?

My berries were producing a few here or there for the last month. I noticed the few berries I had are suddenly disappearing. I noticed some empty birds nests near my porch.

Was wondering if birds shift from worms to berries once they have an empty nest? Then again it could be some other animal after my berries.

No - there's no correlation. Birds that primarily eat insects eat insects, birds that eat seed eat seed, & birds that are omniverous (i.e. eat everything) eat everything.

While obviously they'll hunt more when they have young in the nest, their preferences don't change.

Nope, just the berries are ripe.

Kind of like the ideal time to pick sweet corn is when the Racoons do

Early last week I got up and watered around 6:30 one day. I noticed that there were some nice strawberries. Should have picked them. Instead, I took my 5 year old for a bike ride, expecting to pick strawberries for breakfast afterward.

By the time I got back, the birds had eaten all but 3. I let mommy and the kids have the three while I rigged up the bird netting.

5/8 bird netting is available lots of places and it stops the birds but allows the bees to get to the blossoms. I've found it in 14 foot squares and 8x50 foot rolls

I space some 2x2 posts about every 4 feet around the perimeter of the bed. I string cotton crochet thread from each post to every other post, taking a wrap at the top of each of the posts. This creates a web of crochet thread that I can drape the bird netting over.

The thread holds the netting well above the plants so that it's easy to put up and to pull off. I weight the sides down with water filled milk jugs. Takes me about 30 seconds to pull the netting off for berry picking and only a bit longer to put it back up again.

In the past the birds have ignored my berries, but I suspect that there is not as much natural forage for them this year because the weather has been so weird.

I continue to put out feed to bring in birds and they in turn, continue to enjoy the grasshoppers, which, though I do notice them, are not appearing to do much plant damage.

I notice that the grasshoppers generally flee the strawberry bed when I pick. Later, they try to come back and the larger ones get snared in the bird net when they do. I have learned to leave my feeders empty on the days when I plan to pick strawberries because the pine siskins and house sparrows will deign to eat grasshoppers when the niger seed is withheld.

I'd like to dispatch a few of the sparrows though. They are an invasive species and they chase or even carry off the siskins and other birds. Literally carry them off; I watched a sparrow take on a pine siskin and the sparrow, I kid you not, took the siskin's foot in his mouth and flew a considerable distance, the siskin shrieking and struggling the whole time.

Oh...I like those directions CT! I have to put up netting over my blueberries tomorrow, and I have water jugs I've been looking for a good use for

How high are the 4x4's? Will it hurt the plants if I put the net right over them if I don't have any wood?

It won't hurt the plants if you put the netting right over them, but doing it that way makes it harder to pull the netting off and put it back on, and since I need to pick strawberries every day, I like the convenience.

Over my strawberries, the tops of the posts are about 12" above ground level, but that's just because I had a bunch of 2x2 pine scraps that were 2 feet long and by the time I sharpened one end and whacked them in with a hammer, that's how long they ended up.

I should have made them longer because the foliage on my strawberries has now grown up higher and it's mushed down under the netting.

This isn't a huge problem except that since the leaves are smushed down a bit, the air circulation is inhibited and there could be a problem with foliage that can't dry out. Strawberries are about done for the year, so I am not going to worry about it until next year.

This year the set up was temporary. Next year I will make up longer support posts and I will use parachute cord instead of crochet thread to make the support webbing. I'll use better wood, cedar or redwood maybe, and I will round over the ends and mill in a finial of some kind that will hold the cord neatly.

I cobble a lot of stuff together when I need to get a job done fast, but eventually I like to have everything neat and finished looking...hard in a garden because everything is always changing, and mine always looks like a construction zone...for that matter, so does the house!

By the way, heavy 100% cotton crochet thread is really handy to have around in the garden. You can buy a 1000yd roll for around 5 bucks...much cheaper than jute garden twine.

Besides supporting my bird netting, I use it to weave my bean and pea trellises. Peas and beans readily grab on to it and wind around it, and at the end of the season, it goes into the compost along with the peavines and beanstalks.

Does this actually work?

ctdahle - thanks for the cotton crochet thread idea. I tend to use knitting yarn for peas, beans, melons, etc. - just because I have it on hand and it doesn't break. But it can't be composted. What a "DUH" moment when I read your suggestion. I have cones of the crochet thread for making dishcloths. Inexpensive AND strong. When I told DH he thought it was a great idea too.

Matt, as for the fake snake (or owls, etc.) they must work. Used to live in SE Kentucky where we had LOTS of rattlers and black snakes. Never thought about it, but rodents and birds were never a problem down there..... Too bad they're not selling those snakes any more. Think I'm going to head to the fabric store to see what I can find. Somebody surely has fake snakeskin vinyl or something similar that would work.

I don't work very hard to keep the birds out, 'cause like I was sayin', they eat the grasshoppers. However, I've read that a 3-4 foot length of garden hose is effective as a fake snake to scare the birds off.

We put up scare crows when the corn is close to ripe. They seem to work.

I beleive that with anything you do, you have to vary it. Put out the fake snakes when the berries are nearly ripe and put them away afterward. Birds and other animals lose their fear of anything that is unchanging and has not attacked them. Thus, they get used to the fake snakes and owls and scarecrows after a while, so take them down as soon as the crop they are protecting is done. If you leave them up too long, the birds learn that the scare crow means, "Hey Dudes! Food supply over here!"