Humming Tape for Fruit Trees

Keeping the birds away from your fruit trees over summer can be a big job! I find it helpful to use a combination of nets, shiny objects, and humming tape.

If you have fruit trees in your garden then you probably have had to worry about birds getting your fruit before you can! Often the birds don’t even eat all the fruit, they just peck holes in it to test to see if it is ripe. This is an annual battle in my garden!

A couple of years ago I shared a post which suggested ways to try to protect your summer fruit from the birds. It included things like how to net a fruit tree and what to hang in the tree to try to scare the birds.

I have been using nets and shiny objects, such as CDs, for the last few years but recently I have come across another product that seems to deter the birds. Each summer I now add some humming tape to our fruit trees. It is a fairly inexpensive product that I bought at the hardware store (Bunnings for $7.50).

To use it you just stretch it out between two objects or posts near the fruit trees. The humming tape has to be stretched nice and tight so that when the wind blows the tape produces a fluttering/humming noise.

We have used this in our garden this year and it seems to work quite well. If you have it stretched tight enough it only needs a slight breeze to get it humming. It comes in a 30m roll so if it breaks (ours has) then it is easy enough to just put up some more. Based on its performance so far I can highly recommend the use of humming tape as something that will help to keep the birds out of fruit trees over the summer.

As I mentioned in my previous post, you cannot rely on just one method to protect your fruit trees. If you have a net that is big enough to cover the tree right to the ground you will probably be okay. But if, like me, you don’t have enough big nets to cover all of your trees you will need to rely on multiple bird scaring methods.

Just remember that the birds tend to get used to these shiny objects and funny noises after a while. So make sure that you change them around every now and again.

For more garden tips check out my Garden Tips and Ideas board on Pinterest.