It's now illegal to use large-gauge netting in Canberra to stop birds, possums and flying foxes guzzling your fruit, with a fines up to $800.
This is a Good Thing, even if it means you now need to race out to pull the existing netting off your late-bearing apple trees, ripening oranges, or your vegie patch. Birds, fruit bats, snakes and even pre-occupied wombats can all get tangled in large-gauge netting, and there are more of these than ever before seeking food and sanctuary in urban areas.
The fruit bats no longer have the gum trees and other native species that usually supply their preferred blossom and fruits, because they have been cut down or bulldozed. Vast areas of bush are still recovering from the 2019-20 bushfires and drought that led up to them.
Wild birds are in the same position. Canberra now provides an essential food source, but like fruit bats, birds also get tangled up in bird netting, and die of injuries, thirst or starvation unless rescued and not too badly injured. Tiger snakes and brown snakes also easily get tangled. This is not fun for the snakes, nor for anyone who finds them still alive but trapped in their backyard. Call WIRES for help for injured or trapped animals and to relocate snakes, and please give a large donation of money or time in return.
But back to netting. If you can poke your index finger through the holes, they are too big. Thankfully there are other solutions.
My favourite solution is to grow more so there's enough for birds and bats and possums and us too. I grow varied species of lillypilly, as well as calamondins and cumquats to distract the birds and bats with food they actually prefer to large juicy oranges or winter crisp apples.
Native species like slightly sourer fruit than us humans, which is why your crop vanishes about ten days before you want to begin picking. Birds also like fruit that is small enough for them to hold, or to gulp as they cling upside down on the next -branch.
That system worked almost perfectly for us until the last drought, when lack of water meant there wasn't enough fruit to feed all of us and the visiting starving wildlife too. We decided to leave most of the fruit for the wildlife, because we could buy our food. Birds and fruit bats can't.
There are many options to keep furred or feathered garden invaders away from your crops. Try netting with small holes or consider fruit fly exclusion drapery, which looks like nothing can get through it, including sunlight or rain, but actually fruit ripens faster under it. It will even protect for about three degrees of frost and from moderate hail damage.
Then there are the "having fun" tricks, which work up to a point: motion-sensing devices that shoot out a jet of water if anything moves in the fruit trees. Guests may need to be warned not to venture too close to the lemon tree in case they are drenched, especially in mid-winter.
Imitation brown snakes, bought or homemade, might help keep the less intelligent birds away. Flying eagle/hawk-shaped kites strung above the garden work better, but must be moved at least every three days or the birds learn they are harmless.
Flashing disco lights and loud discordant music played all night keep birds and fruit bats away. They will have the same distressing effect on your neighbours, so don't be surprised if the police knock on your door, unless your garden is isolated.
Spraying fruit a different colour with a non-toxic paint can work for birds for a while, but not with fruit bats, who are guided by smell. Guards dogs are no help - the birds and bats gaze down at them smugly, still guzzling no matter how much the dog barks.
Our "watch dog" is a white goshawk who likes to perch in the pomegranate tree to choose which bird to eat next. But even she sleeps during fruit bat raids...
When the forest is cut or burnt, the inhabitants become homeless and starve. Cover some of your fruit, as a reward for work and money spent and so its deliciousness encourages yourself to plant even more. But do leave some for our increasingly desperate wildlife. Think of it as rent for the "once was habitat" we now enjoy.
This week I am:
- Possibly planting the seeds that need autumn and winter cold to germinate, like onions, more onions, Flanders and peony poppies for spring gorgeousness, and larkspur seed which must be sown in the cold for spring and summer blooms but can get downy mildew if summer is hot and moist.
- Giving our tiny 'lawn' a last mow - the rest of the grass is winter wallaby, roo, bower bird and wombat tucker.
- Beginning the Winter Snake Hunt - mowing and moving places where snakes may have sheltered near the house for winter, and now are hibernating too deeply to bite me. I hope. Do not do this on warm days.
- Weeding. Raking. Weeding.
- Making the first pot of 'bottom of the garden soup' which will vary through winter.
