Cherry Picking In Full Swing In Central Otago

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28160, 26 December 1956, Page 5

Cherry Picking In Full Swing In Central Otago

“The Press” Special Service

DUNEDIN, December 23. The cherry picking season is now in full swing in Central Otago, and students and other casual labour are scrambling up ladders to pick the season’s crop. The unusual wet spell has done some damage, and a fair degree of loss has been experienced among growers resulting from splitting. The good market prices that have been ruling, however, tyave compensated for the loss of fruit from this cause. The greatest source of loss, has been from birds for they have developed a taste for cherries with the result that year after year cherry growers wage constant warfare on them. The loss of fruit due to their depredations is considerable, even with all the devices of men to scare them off. These devices are as varied as they are curious, but the most effective method is still the shot gun. Thousands of rounds of ammunition must be used each season and as long as the man with the gun marches up and down the rows of cherry trees shooting the blackbirds that are too slow on the wing those birds develop a healthy respect for him and keep their distance.

Not all the bangings that are heard in the cherry districts come from shot guns for commercial enterprise has capitalised on the gullibility of the bird and produced a carbide contraption which explodes at regular intervals with a report very like the shot gun's best efforts. Even then the grower has to make occasional sallies with. the shot gun and wing a few birds to keep up appearances. The birds are not fooled so easily.

An old method of scaring birds is a row of cans strung on a long cord. This, in the back yard orchards, may lead into the kitchen window and be given a mighty tug every now and again to set up a clamour and set the birds to flight or in the commercial orchards, be attached to a machine that replaces the human hand.

The ratchet device on the motor does the tugging and sets the cans rattling just as noisily as the human method.

Noise is the main scare so long as the birds do not grow accustomed to it for then they may do their damage to a background of din. One Alexandra grower, noted for his enterprise.

rigged up a loud speaker and amplifier which broadcast recorded music over an area approximately a square mile. Increased Consumption It was effective for a while until the birds found they could eat more cherries per minute to a musical accompaniment than without. Dinner music did not worry them, only the townsfolk. The same grower had another device—a travelling scarecrow which travelled on an endless wire back and forth along a prescribed route. It was effective until the birds started hitch-hiking rides while they digested their cherries.

However, the best and only effective method is now becoming increasingly more common, total enclosure with fine mesh wire netting. It is an expensive method for in some cases there may be an acre or so to wire in, but the growers who have gone to the expense—the men that ought to know — are convinced it pays. It is said that the saving in cherries for two or three seasons pays for the enclosing. The birds can eat many hundreds of pounds worth of cherries in the course of a few seasons and that money pays for the netting. An interesting sidelight on this enclosing method is that hens can be kept in the enclosure and provide a payable sideline for the grower’s wife. The fowls are removed in the fruit season.