Stop the Quail From Eating Apricot Leaves!

Q. How do you stop Gambel's quail from eating apricot tree leaves? They never touched my 3-year-old tree until near the end of the last growing season then they swarmed the tree and chewed at everything that was green. These little fish poops ate all melon plant sprouts yesterday as well. I tried hanging CD's, strips of tin foil to no avail.

Bird pecked peaches at the Orchard

A. About the only thing I can suggest is giving them an alternative to munch on or cage them out using bird netting. I am sure there are lots of suggestions from people like spraying garlic, hanging pie tins or DVD’s to scare them but in my experience these tricks do not work for very long or not at all.

Electronic bird scaring device used at the Orchard. It would work for about two weeks. After that, the birds got used to it.

            Birds in general can be a real problem, particularly to the fruit. The other option is to let them eat the leaves and let the tree replace what is lost. Once you get past spring, hopefully, they will move on to other more tender leaves at your neighbors.