Magpies/crows eating unripe fruit

mr chips

I've several apple & cherry trees, a few pear trees, couple of plum trees and a few greengage - over 30 in all. Most of them had plenty of developing fruit on them before we went away for a week just after the start of the month, but nothing even approaching ripeness - cherries were all green/yellow and hard, for example. I'd been planning to net most of the soft fruit trees later this month to keep birds away from ripe fruit, but it's already too late - we came back last week to find the cherries, greengages and even the pears all completely stripped. All I have left is the ripening apples and some plums. Pretty sure it's thanks to the magpies (or possibly them and the crows) that have become more numerous this year.

Apart from getting my licence and a rifle and shooting the f*ckers, any suggestions for preventing a repeat occurrence? I could hang a few old CDs in the trees on lengths of string, but magpies are clever feckers and I don't know if that would deter them for long, or at all. Some of the trees are getting too big to net them properly without damaging them, and it'd be a fairly big task to do them all when there are nearly 20 just for soft fruit.

Either way, I'll be netting the one plum tree that has fruit on it now. Would it be worth doing the apples as well? I've never had that problem with them before, but I'd never encountered the pear trees being attacked either.

The Pheasant2

Perhaps they were more desperate for a source of water given the recent drought conditions?

mr chips

Perhaps, although we do live beside a small river. It's flowing pretty slowly and is much lower than usual, but you'd still be able to get nearly up to your knees in it. The magpies are pretty aggressive to all the smaller birds and even to a neighbour's cat which ambles along the lane occasionally. I've seen them winding up another neighbour's dog where I previously lived, perched on top of a gate just out of reach of where it was tethered and jabbering away while it barked furiously at them.

Regardless, it's future prevention I need to think about now.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

It's unlikely to have been Magpies or any member of the crow family as fruit is not one if their favoured foods by a long way. An influx of Mistle Thrushes can strip a few trees in a couple of hours but they usually go for ripe fruits. There aren't many birds that would go for unripe fruit and my own are all uncovered with no kisses, bar a couple of apples to a squirrel, despite the garden being a haven to at least 16 species of bird in any week.

It's hard to know what action to take in future without knowing the cause.

standardg60

What is it with people having grudges against magpies? You have no idea what happened as you were away. Personally I have never seen a magpie having the remotest interest in any of my fruit.
Did you have a look on the ground? July fruit drop is a very common and natural occurrence with fruit trees, especially if they're suffering from drought, it's the first thing they'll get rid of if in distress.
Granted the cherries may have been attacked, but much more likely to have been thrushes, blackbirds or starlings..aim for them first if you want to shoot something :-).

mr chips

Yup, first thing I did was look on the ground. Nothing to be seen. I was thinking magpies as I've seen them pulling seedlings out of the ground before now, e.g. onion bulbs after they've put up a few inches of a shoot. No grudges against magpies specifically - is that a thing?? - just against any destructive b@stard that wrecks my stuff ... 8-) With the lack of rain, I had been watering the roots of the younger trees every single morning and/or evening for over two months, from the beginning of May until we went away for just six days on July 5 - the unusually hot (i.e. over 25 degrees) conditions only lasted here for another two of those days, and it actually rained all day on Wednesday 11th. So I'm reasonably sure that drought wouldn't have been an issue - in any case, that would surely have affected the apple trees as badly as the pears, but they're still well laden with underdeveloped fruit.

Graces7

mr chips wrote: »

I've several apple & cherry trees, a few pear trees, couple of plum trees and a few greengage - over 30 in all. Most of them had plenty of developing fruit on them before we went away for a week just after the start of the month, but nothing even approaching ripeness - cherries were all green/yellow and hard, for example. I'd been planning to net most of the soft fruit trees later this month to keep birds away from ripe fruit, but it's already too late - we came back last week to find the cherries, greengages and even the pears all completely stripped. All I have left is the ripening apples and some plums. Pretty sure it's thanks to the magpies (or possibly them and the crows) that have become more numerous this year.

Apart from getting my licence and a rifle and shooting the f*ckers, any suggestions for preventing a repeat occurrence? I could hang a few old CDs in the trees on lengths of string, but magpies are clever feckers and I don't know if that would deter them for long, or at all. Some of the trees are getting too big to net them properly without damaging them, and it'd be a fairly big task to do them all when there are nearly 20 just for soft fruit.

Either way, I'll be netting the one plum tree that has fruit on it now. Would it be worth doing the apples as well? I've never had that problem with them before, but I'd never encountered the pear trees being attacked either.

Are you sure it was birds?

ednwireland

Graces7 wrote: »

Are you sure it was birds?

its pretty obvious when you see it had half my apples last year they seem to go for them semi ripe as well.

solo1y

I understand this is old or whatever, but I have actually seen magpies taking my unripe pears, hollowing them out on my roof and then dropping them into the driveway on the other side of the house. I don't know if this is some sort of mafia tactic, but I'm starting to get scared.

looksee

Not that many magpies around here but lots of crows (and/or rooks, I can't tell the difference), and yes, they do strip apple trees. I have managed to keep mostly ahead of them this year, but last year they just stripped the trees. Oddly there were two eating apple trees, they stripped one overnight but the other, whose apples were not really worth picking as they were flavourless and had tough skins, they ignored. Choosy birds! The evidence was mostly under a stand of conifer trees a couple of hundred meters away where they took the apples to eat them and many of them ended up splatted on the road - either to make them easier to eat or dropped accidentally.

magicbastarder

We have had issues with pigeons on the damson and the plum tree, they've never gone after apples though. Sometimes the blackbirds have had a poke at an apple but rarely more than a few each year.