davem said
I went out to pick some figs today and found a flock of starlings in the tree. They had eaten the core out of every single ripe fig - aargh! The variety was "brown turkey".Does anyone else have this issue?
1980, late season dark fig fruit, can't say for sure if it was brown turkey, just in one day, the whole crop, total decimation. Starlings. Memorable.
Nice to know about figs and pH. My soil tests at 5.5 and they seem to do OK but maybe better with more alkaline soil? As in, maybe earlier? Or more ripen? Or hold on to brebas that get dropped? I don't know.
We use a woodstove and local wood from our property. I spread wood ashes on the vegetable garden, so will do so around the fig trees too.
I read figs benefit from lime for the calcium as well as for the pH adjustment. I forget where I read that. Lime gives slow acting pH change, ashes give fast acting change, but about 1/2 as much calcium as lime. Again, I forget where I read that.
We used holographic tape strips for the cherries. They actually did seem to deter birds, and birds love cherries. Don't know what they would do for starlings. Our figs were decimated by yellow jackets. Just a bad fig year.
Starlings? Yup! They attack my Desert Kings occasionally. I try to keep ahead of them. Starlings tend to give ripening figs a test peck, just before they are fully ripe. In a day or two, the birds return for their now mature prize, only to be disappointed... Knowing the habits of Starlings, whenever I see a pecked fig, I pick it immediately, and eat it myself.
Perhaps I am just being contrary. I have so many trees, and they are so huge, jungle-like, and wild, that predation by birds doesn't really bother me much. I can't generally reach all my figs anyway. I sometimes bend down large limbs and cut them off, just to harvest the figs. Even so, I can't reach 'em all, and I couldn't eat them all either.
I'm sure the long, thin, limbs that my figs are sometimes attached to, also frustrate the Starlings greatly. Can't peck while yer flying, and there is no stable place to stand. Possibly part of the reason they are in such an angry, ravenous mood, when they get to your house.
On the practical side. If you don't have fig forest, but more conventionally tended, tree-like structures, with major scaffolding limbs, that you can reach.... Just gently drape a bed-sheet around a limb of ripening figs, affix in place with cloths-pins for a few days, and pick when ripe. The Starlings will probably leave the covered figs alone. At any rate, this strategy has worked for me in the past.
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