Monday 24 June 2013

Cherry Picker...

Our cherries are not plentiful again this year and this morning we caught our old enemy helping himself....

 Can you see who it is yet?


Yes; It's that pesky woodpecker we only ever see when there is food around...

There is only one solution. It worked last year with the Hazelnuts, tomorrow we will see if it works with the cherries!!!

If that fails then we will be trying our recipe for Stuffed Woodpecker! but this time it will be stuffed with cherries!

8 comments:

Tim said...

We used to buy pigeon breasts from the game dealer / game keeper on Leeds Farmers' Market...
£5 for 10 breasts...
ready to cook...

We'd cook them with Morello cherries from our tree on the allotment...
then go and yell at the pigeons in the top of the tree...
"We're eating your cousins!
We're eating your cousins!!
We're eating your cousins!!!"


Not that they seemed to take a blind bit of notice... hurrumphhh!

Craig said...

I'm very jealous of your cherries. We had so many when we lived in France that we were happy to share them with the birds (as if we had any option)! They took the high part of the trees and we took the low part.

Jean said...

I bet Woody has been lurking in the bushes, waiting for you to get on with ripening his cherries!
Good luck with the battle - I see you ave fetched the big guns out!

Colin and Elizabeth said...

It could have gone for the strawberries, we have a glut of them... Which is interesting as most of our plants are English. The French ones have been poor probably due to the wet weather.

GaynorB said...

I saw some carrier bags tied to trees I a cherry orchard near Chaumussay. Not sure how effective they were though.At least if it rains again your scary crow will be in theright gear!

Craig said...

I meant to say - our neighbours in France used to tie CD's to their trees and swore that it worked. Worth a shot?

Colin and Elizabeth said...

Craig, thanks for that suggestion. We used CDs as part of our defences in the hazel tree last year and they seemed to work. We saved the hazels and picked a good crop - only to have them eaten in the cellar by a mouse!!

Colin and Elizabeth said...

Gaynor, thanks too for your suggestion re carrier bags. We've seen these in a few of the fields round here so we decided to try them on one area of the strawberries and with reasonable success. I think next year we should do a comparison between the supermarkets to see which bag is most effective!