GardenDesk

Use CDs to Scare Away Birds From the Garden

In the past I have had problems with all kinds of animals eating the garden. Last year my ultimate garden nemesis was the Blue Jay! Blue Jays ate all of our corn seedlings and then started on our apples. I was able to scare them away from the apple trees with shiny silver CDs.

CDs are the modern day equivalent to pie pans. My Grandpa used to save tin or aluminum pie plates all year long to use as scarecrows. Today, it is easier to get shiny CDs or DVDs.

You can save old CDs or DVDs that you don't want anymore or save them from things like AOL offers. If you can't find enough to recycle, you can buy cheap CD-Rs for around .15 cents each. That's what I did after looking into expensive bird control methods available from places like Bird-X. There are great products available, but I always like to try the cheaper methods first.

In case you think Blue Jays are pretty and don't share in my disdain for them, I'll show you what they started doing to our young apples:

 

Something had to be done so I took about a ten foot length of twine, tied CDs to each end and threw the whole thing over the apple tree. Here is what it looked like after I got 100 CDs on the tree!

 

Pictures really don't capture just how crazy this looked. The CD's really reflected in the sunlight. They definitely scared the birds (and our neighbors at first).

 

It actually was pretty funny. At about 7:30 each evening when the sun was shining and the wind was blowing, we had an instant disco ball! Bright lights moved across the walls in our house even. It took a while to get used to.

Unfortunately it was possible to get used to. After a few weeks an adventurous Jay again went after apples not close to a CD. I kept adding more and more CDs until all birds stayed away for the most part. The Squirrels on the other hand eventually learned that the CDs weren't a threat.

So I caution you to not hang your CDs sooner than needed, and move them around if possible. This year, I plan to hang them on posts in and around the garden. that way I can move their location at night every few days. Hopefully CDs will keep the birds away from the corn too.

Have you ever tried this? Do you have any other strange ways to scare away birds from your garden? Please share your ideas.

If you've never used CDs in place of pie pans before, give it a try. It really does look cool!

Keep on Growing!

- Marc

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Contech Scarecrow; many uses in the garden!

My previous post was partly about all of the animal pest problems I have here in rural Kentucky. Although I didn't know it yet, as I was writing that post my newest animal problem was beginning. Squirrels are stealing my apples! I surprised one sitting in the apple tree and while running away, he dropped this apple from his mouth:

My previous post was also partly about my new garden gadget, the Scarecrow from Contech. This got me thinking that I remember seeing something on their website called SquirrelStop. Contech has many neat products but Contech Squirrel Stop is a bird feeder that spins rapidly when a Squirrel hangs from it. It would be pretty funny to see a surprised and dizzy squirrel get spun off of a bird feeder. In my case the SquirrelStop would not help. How could I keep the squirrels from eating my apples?

Of course my answer was right in front of me. I was going to wait and use the Scarecrow water sprayer to defend my corn but why not try it out on the Squirrels first? They had already eaten almost all of the apples in the tree closest to the woods, but they haven't touched the next tree yet. I set up the Contech Scarecrow next to that tree but couldn't wait to see if it worked. My daughters were picking tomatoes in the garden so I called them over to the apple tree.

It works!

This is a fun gadget. The apple tree limbs blowing in the breeze do not set it off so I guess it isn't a simple motion detector. It seems to only go off if a living thing approaches. It nearly knocked a poor sparrow to the ground! The range of the detector is pretty far as well. It "saw" me working in the garden 50 feet away. The spray doesn't shoot that far but the noise would probably scare animals away even before they get wet. You can also set the radius on how much it sprays. I've got it trained just on the apple trees, but you could make it spray nearly 360 degrees. If I got one more of these I could probably guard my whole garden. Cool!