Battle Plan for the Birds

I don't want to give our secret plans up to the enemy but I doubt any birds are reading my blog so I feel like I can reveal some of our battle preparation. I recently completed assembly of 8 perch towers that we will soon mount our 3 hawk and owl decoys on throughout the vineyard.  The idea is to move the decoys each day to make them look more realistic.  We also purchased an electronic bird repelling caller which emits the sounds of birds as they are being slowly tortured with sounds of hunting hawks also recorded so it sounds very realistic.  The starlings will have to be pretty bold to fly in under the watchful eyes of our decoys while the sounds of their tortured companions are being played for their entertainment and our pleasure!

Finally as our last line of defense we have erected our bird netting over 100 % of our grapes this year.  Instead of using just the nets as we have in the past.  This year we employed the use of plastic PVC spreaders and plastic twine to hold the nets away from the grapes and prevent the birds from landing on the net to peck through.  Thanks to our friend Clint Etnoyer who provided us with the PVC from old plumbing jobs.  If it were not for Chris and Clint we would have spent several $100 to purchase and install vineyard spreaders.  The spreaders and nets look great as you can see but don't tell the birds about our first 2 lines of defense.  This year we may finally win the battle of the birds.