Hello and Welcome,
This is an Amalie Robert Estate Update: Bird Warfare. A FLOG communication from Dena and Ernie @AmalieRobert. Amalie
Robert Willamette Valley Pinot Noir.
The wine berries are turning from green to pink to purple and soon they will be
just as sweet as maple surple! But not yet.
We are coming down to the wire. Only a few more weeks until we begin the Great
Cluster Pluck: Harvest 2020. That fact is not lost upon our bewinged friends
robins and starlings, as it is their job to know these things, you know. Their
other job is to not get eaten by an apex predator, such as a Red-tailed hawk.
The only other thing in their job description to reproduce. Their recreational
interests include perching above freshly washed cars for their morning
constitutional, where the windshield is their favorite target. That about
covers it for these little blighters.
Our job is to grow wine berries, execute a successful harvest and then ferment
the sugar out of them. Over the last 20 years or so we have become somewhat
adept at this process. We have adapted, and in some cases prevailed over our
airborne intruders. Here is how we did it.
The old school solution is to cover the entire plant with netting. This can be
an effective bird deterrent for crops such as blueberries where you can cover
the entire shrubbery. The vineyard presents a unique challenge to netting where
the vines form a row that is about 7 feet tall and 400 feet long. Our
adaptation is to just cover the fruit zone on both sides with netting that
falls all the way down to the ground, thus preventing filching from below.
Our next evolution was to put out reflective streamers. This is really fun and
dresses up the vineyard. Mylar reflective tape or ribbon in silver or metallic
colors comes in 150 to 400 foot rolls. The process is to cut the roll into 3 or
4 foot sections and then attach them to the trellis. When the breeze picks up,
the reflective tape catches the sun, assuming it is sunny. This is what alerts
the birds to danger and gives the vineyard that Christmas tinsel like look. It
has virtually no effect on the birds, but it is really neat to look at. You can
also hang your old CD’s on the vines and achieve the same results, but with
lower costs.
Here is the latest natural remedy known as a “firenado”. This is a California
invention where a wildfire and tornado come together, thus clearing the
airspace of unwanted birds. As you can see from the current fires, there are
several opportunities to have a firenado. But they are fairly hard to implement
(let alone control) and therefore not recommended. You can learn more here.
After a period of trial and error, resulting in a lot of fat and happy birds,
we returned to our roots – technology. To gain and maintain air superiority, we
deploy Bird Gard bioacoustics.
All you need is a control box which accepts e-prom chips, a set of speakers, an
e-prom chip specific to the birds you want to target and a power supply. The
control box is highly programmable and has a photo eye to detect sunrise.
Set it and forget it, the Bird Gard unit does the rest. Every morning when the
control box detects first light, it begins to broadcast the sounds of the
target species (robins and starlings) under duress (aka being attacked) and the
sounds of the control species (Cooper’s hawks, Sharp-shinned hawks and
Red-tailed hawks – love you guys) performing the control (aka attack). All
perfectly normal and just a simulation of the natural order. As the old saying
goes, you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.
As you might imagine, protecting 35 acres of wine berries is going to take more
than just one control box and a couple of speakers. Here is where the synergies
come into play. By setting up multiple Bird Gard units around the property,
there is always one of them going off. And by using different e-prom chips you
can increase the control species calls. The idea is to catch the target species
in the air, and completely unaware. They then modify their behavior RFN to
change course to a safe area away from the prized wine berries.
Sometimes not. The Bird Gard is also effective in attracting the control
species. There have been times when we have found carcasses of the target
species in the vineyard. And we frequently see raptors in the air circling the
vineyard. If Ernie does a good job keeping the grass cut down, this Bird Gard
set-up is also helpful in controlling the local rodent population. It’s a
WIN-WIN-WIN! And in farming, that’s about as good as you are going to get it.
As a BONUS for those of you who read all the way to the bottom, here is a
VineStories video of an Amalie Robert Estate harvest.
Alternatively, you can watch a very classic spaghetti harvest.
Kindest Regards,
Dena & Ernie
