Why You May Want To Start Putting Aluminum Foil In Your Fruit Trees

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In both commercial orchards and private ones, birds often can destroy a percentage of any fruit crop. If you've got a whole flock stealing the literal fruits of your labor from your cherry or apple trees, then you might want to consider an easy and cheap method to try to keep them away. Try hanging aluminum foil in your fruit trees. 

For years, it's been thought that reflective surfaces scare birds away. There's a lot of research out there with birds and reflective surfaces that has to do trying to prevent them from colliding with windows, not scaring them away with aluminum foil. However, some gardeners swear that hanging shiny objects like foil, old CDs, or pie pans in fruit trees or near gardens can discourage birds from foraging there. The light may disorient them or the birds could see their own reflections as a threat. Some birds' eyes might be more sensitive to light, like pigeons. Or maybe the noise that the tin foil makes is what unnerves the birds. 

However it might work, if it works, aluminum foil is a nontoxic remedy that won't hurt either the birds or your trees. Also, after harvest, you can grab that foil off of the tree and toss it straight into the recycling can. If you want to experiment with this inexpensive strategy for yourself, head outside — you can do this in a couple of ways.

To scare birds, you can make long, skinny strips of tin foil to hang from branches in your fruit tree, or you can make a sort of foil ornament by flattening it into a square. If you use more than one square or strip and keep the pieces fairly close together, you might increase the dizzying effects. You could also try balling up the aluminum foil and hanging it from branches to deter any flying friends from landing there.

If the bird bandits are grabbing whole apples or figs, you can also loosely wrap foil around the fruit itself to keep it hidden from hungry birds. This might be effective for those of you trying to grow Medjool dates. If you find that a lot of birds are on the ground near your fruit trees or in your garden beds, you can also use aluminum foil on the ground or buried just beneath the soil. Birds might avoid pecking at foil on the ground. 

Also, keep in mind that if the aluminum foil doesn't make much of a difference, you can always up your reflective game. Buy holographic and highly reflective tape, like Ruolan bird scare tape ribbon, designed to disorient birds. Despite its name, it's not actually sticky tape, so you'll need to knot it around a branch to secure it. When using the tape, hang it up high enough to be batted around by the breeze. 

After you're done gathering the fruit from your trees, take down any aluminum foil to save for next year. Tin foil, like any strategy, isn't a foolproof method of deterring birds. It can come loose from the branches, especially during a very windy or stormy day. Even if you find the tactic effective at first, eventually, birds might become comfortable with the shiny decorations in the tree. So this cheap, aluminum foil hack might not work over a long period of time once birds become used to the objects that are hanging there. Birds are pretty clever that way. 

You might want to combine foil with other strategies to keep birds away from fruit. Smaller birds are scared of predatory birds like owls or falcons, so you can always hang or mount a plastic owl near or in your tree. You could also try covering your fruit tree with mesh or a net. Professional orchards sometimes even use oversized inflatable figures – or you can even just hang an oversized balloon with eyes on it. 

As a last resort, you can always try putting a bird feeder on the other side of the yard from your fruit trees to keep the birds happy and fed and away from your fruit. In the end, you might just have to make peace with losing some of the harvest to your bird friends, who – remember – can actually benefit your yard or garden.