Oh no! There used to be baby strawberries at the end of these stems!
This must be the work of birds, right? Luckily only half of my plants are June-bearing and had already bloomed/fruited. In order to give the others a chance, I rushed to the store and bought some of this netting to drape over the bed: 
I also draped it over the blueberry bushes to be on the safe side. The netting is pretty flimsy, but it was a quick fix. Does anyone have (better) tips for keeping birds off fruit?While draping the netting, I noticed THIS on the deck:
Sawdust? From where?The underside of the deck railing! It's a sizable hole.
Do y'all think a bird did this? What does it want?!
9 comments:
We've been lucky that no birds have discovered the berries yet. I've heard hanging foil strips or pie pans will keep them away, they don't like the light reflected or something like that.
Do you have woodpeckers around?
Ginger, the hole looks like you have carpenter bees. They are large...look like bumble bees on steriods. Not sure what did that to your strawberries.
Catherine, the birds ate all of my baby strawberries and put a hurting on my blueberries seemingly overnight, so if you have a lots of birds, take precautions, unless you have enough berries to feed you AND the birds! Thanks for the tips.
Janet - Oh, you are right. I just googled it. So do they LIVE in there? How can I make them go away??
I use the netting and it seems to work just fine, even though it is a bit of a pain, in that you are inclined to get tangled in it.
Ya, the birds have been eating my strawberries too. They won't eat them when they're mostly green still, so I've been trying to harvest right before they're ripe and let them ripen inside.
The hole looks like it's the result of carpenter bees which are abundant in the deep South. You can plug it up with expanding foam and sand down till it's flush. It'll be a never ending battle where you live.
Carpenter bees for sure! Try putting some sort of netting over your berries to keep the birds out
Ginger,
I've sent our address twice for Bilbo, let me know if you receive it, OK? Thanks,
Victoria.
So strange! OK, I just emailed you at your other address. Hope it works.
keewee - that is exactly what happened to me - I got tangled in the netting! frustrating!
NSAR - oh man, what a bummer. I'll get some of the expanding foam and fill up the TWO holes. I guess it doesn't really matter if there are any bees in there at the time?! the funny thing with all of this is that usually I WANT to attract birds and bees!!
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