Hi, everyone:

I have two almond trees and two walnut trees. Each is about 30 feet high. Any suggestion for keeping black birds from getting the nuts before I can?

Cindy

Hi Cindy,

Unfortunately with the height of your trees I doubt there's anything you can do to beat the blackbirds to the harvest! You might try putting out a fake snake or owl (if you can find one somewhere) to see if that will scare the birds away.

I've had a motion detector sprinkler device called a Scarecrow (no kidding) for years. It is the best thing I've found for keeping birds and squirrels off my lychee tree. It even 'sees' at night so raccoons, rats and mice are also sprayed. My tree is about half the size of yours, though, so you'd expect to harvest the nuts from the lower part of the trees and let the birds have the ones up top, I guess. It sprays about 35ft. and up to 20ft high, depending how you stake it into the ground.

They're available on Amazon.

Elaine, thanks for sharing that tidbit ... I hadn't even though of the motion detector sprinklers! I googled and found a few places that sell them:
http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UT...
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Hav...
http://www.lowes.com/pd_419999...
http://www.walmart.com/ip/Cont...

It's a great thing, Lin, and I've had mine for at least 15 years. Only problems with it - leaf motion will sometimes trigger it so best to not use it on windy days, and I can't use mine inside the fence perimeter or the cat comes in wet and very annoyed!

Oh, meant to add the 'range' on it also depends upon your water pressure, of course. I noticed mine sprayed one day in a very wimpy manner, and then realized that the rest of the sprinkling system was already running. Usually it's a brisk, noisy spray for about 3 seconds "Tschh, Tschh, Tschh". Very startling even for me! (yup, it's 'got' me a couple of times)

Wow! Thank to everyone for your suggestions and comments. I am going to purchase the motion detector and see what happens :)

Cindy