Amalie Robert Estate Update: Bird Warfare

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