How do I stop birds eating my cherries?

Blackbirds and starlings can strip a cherry tree in a single morning, usually the day before you were going to pick. Deterrents work for a few days at most, because the reward is enormous and birds habituate fast. Everything therefore comes back to a barrier, and whether a barrier is possible was decided when the tree was bought: a cherry on Colt at six metres cannot be netted by anyone, and a cherry on Gisela 5 at two and a half metres can be netted in an afternoon.

Safety

What you'll need

• Netting, 20mm mesh or smaller
• Canes, poles or a frame to hold the net clear of the fruit
• Pegs, bricks or ground staples
• Soft ties

Step by step

1. Accept the constraint first: size decides everything.If the tree is too big to cover, no realistic protection exists. Netting a full-size cherry is not practical and half-netting achieves nothing.
2. Build a frame before the net goes on.Canes, plastic pipe on stakes or a purpose-made cage. The net must be held well clear of the fruit — birds simply peck through netting resting on cherries.
3. Choose netting with a mesh of 20mm or smaller.Large mesh catches birds by the head and wing. Small mesh, pulled tight, is both more effective and far safer. Fine insect mesh also works but cuts the light more.
4. Get the net on before the fruit starts to colour.Birds find ripening fruit before you notice it has ripened. Netting after the first cherries turn is too late.
5. Pull it drum-tight and close it to the ground.Slack netting is what tangles birds. Tension it over the frame and peg or weight the bottom edge all the way round so nothing can get underneath.
6. Check the net every day it is up.A trapped bird will die within hours. Daily checks are a welfare requirement, not a nicety, and a snagged corner will always appear sooner or later.
7. Take the net down as soon as the fruit is picked.Netting left up all year traps birds, hedgehogs and other wildlife, degrades in sunlight and shreds into the garden.
8. Plan a permanent fruit cage if you grow a lot.A walk-in cage covering soft fruit and small trained trees solves the problem for a decade and is far easier to check than an annual netting exercise.
9. Treat scarers as a supplement, not a solution.Flashing tape, old CDs, humming line and scare-eye balloons work for a few days if moved frequently. Birds habituate quickly, so use them to buy the last few days before picking, not as the main defence.
10. Choose the tree with protection in mind next time.Gisela 5 rootstock, a fan against a wall or a pot on a patio all give a cherry you can actually cover. It is the single decision that makes cherries possible in a garden.

Tips

• Acid cherries such as Morello are much less attractive to birds than sweet cherries, and they crop happily on a north wall where they are easy to net.
• A fan-trained cherry on a wall needs netting on one plane only, which is a fraction of the work of covering a free-standing tree.
• Blackbirds usually take fruit from the outside and top of a tree first — a good early warning to check whether the net has slipped.
• Wasps and birds work together against you: a bird peck opens a cherry, wasps enlarge it, brown rot follows. Netting reduces all three problems at once.

Common mistakes

• Draping loose netting straight over the tree — It tangles birds, which is both cruel and an offence, and birds peck straight through netting lying on the fruit anyway. A frame holding tight net clear of the crop is the only correct arrangement.
• Using wide-mesh netting — Birds get their heads through and cannot get back out. Use 20mm mesh or finer.
• Netting after the fruit has started colouring — Birds are watching the tree more closely than you are. The net goes up before the first blush of colour.
• Leaving netting up over winter — It traps wildlife, degrades and sheds plastic. Take it down the day picking finishes.

Alternatives

• Walk-in fruit cage: A permanent framed cage with a door, netted seasonally or year-round with an appropriate mesh. The complete answer for soft fruit and small trained trees, and much easier to inspect than ad hoc netting.
• Grow acid cherries instead: Morello and other cooking cherries are far less targeted, tolerate a north wall, and fan-train easily so they can be netted on one plane.
• Pot-grown cherry moved under cover: A cherry on Gisela 5 in a large pot can be wheeled into a fruit cage, greenhouse porch or netted frame for the three weeks that matter.

Questions people ask