Author: rakeeter

It must be the generally dry conditions and lack of food that has made the birds so aggressive in getting at the grapes.  The table grapes were beginning to ripen but only just the end of July.  That didn’t deter the birds, though.  They ate any grape that was the least bit ripe and more than a few that weren’t.  By the time I realized what was going on and put bird-blocker netting over the vine it was almost picked clean.  I figured Joyce would be upset, the table grapes being her interest, but she shrugged it off.  The wine grapes were so far from being ripe I thought I could cover them at leisure but I was wrong.  We had a dickens of a time closing every little gap in the nets to keep the birds, primarily robins and mockingbirds though we did catch what might have been a variety of vireo, out.  We’d think we had then come back and find half a dozen birds inside the net where they couldn’t get out.  It was a pain to get them out, too.  Sometimes we could open a gap in the net at the end of the row and heard them down that way.  Finally we started just catching them, no easy task I assure you.  It required someone on each side of the row to flush them out and finally get them tangled up in the net so someone could get a hold on them.  The bird was inside the netting and whoever had a hold of it was on the outside, so we had to open a gap, usually at the bottom, so one of us could work a hand up inside the net to grip the bird.  Sometimes the bird’s foot was tangled up or, more often, they had a death grip on the netting which had to be peeled off toe/claw by toe/claw.  Rebecca was good helping to catch the birds and enjoyed releasing them when we freed them from the netting.  Once released the birds high-tailed it without so much as a thank you. Continue reading “The birds” →