You’ve spend months nourishing your plants and tending their every need. The fruits of your labours are just about ripe, then birds swoop in just when they are ready to harvest. Animals have an uncanny knack for knowing when a crop is just ready to eat and often beat us to our produce. While we are all for planting some for the native animals, its nice to once in a while beat them to the big juicy strawberry or tomato!

These simple tricks have been doing the rounds of the internet and it turns out they can be pretty effective.

Painted Rocks

Paint rocks and sprinkle them around your strawberries before they fruit. The birds will give them a try and think that the hard fruits are no good to eat. Then when the real strawberries appear you have a much better chance of getting them before the birds do.

Christmas Decorations

When it comes to tomatoes, outsmarting the birds is a matter of hanging red or orange decorations with the bush. Again the birds will try the fake fruit, think its awful and then when the real tomatoes ripen they are all yours.

These techniques aren’t infallible but they do help you get your hands on a larger share of your produce without having to net your crops.