Do scarecrows really work?
The theory behind them is that they’re supposed to look like a person, and the birds should be scared and keep away. Unfortunately they don’t work. My grandmother used to have fruit bushes at her summer house, and she put up old pie plates, tied to string, on spikes in the ground. When there was a bit of wind, the pie plates would move around, making noise and reflecting sunlight. That would scare the birds away temporarily. The glitch was, if there was no wind, the birds came back. So she rigged an elaborate net of chicken-wire around them and when we wanted to harvest the berries, we’d have to open the nets. Still, some sneaky birds occasionally managed to get inside and be trapped.
