What’s scarier for a bird than lions or tigers? 

Silver shiny sparkly stuff! It’s their kryptonite.

Since part of my garden is in my front yard I figured banging aluminum pie pans weren’t the best idea for noise or aesthetics, so I decided to up the bling game.

I’m usually pretty generous but for these homegrown goodies the more for me and less for the neighborhood wildlife = success. It only took me three years to figure out how to scare birds away from fruit!

Very appealing to 6-year-olds but great at repelling birds and squirrels, a few of these $9 kite tails saved my blueberries, ripe red tomatoes and figs…and made some kids smile too. The fastener easily snaps onto a wire cage or small branch, and the iridescent streamers are pretty fluttering in the breeze.

This summer I even had enough tomatoes to share a few with human neighbors. Especially when it was in trade for these amazingly delicious brown turkey figs.

Now if I could just figure out how to keep the fruit flies away from my Chicago Hardy open-eye figs. Comments are open for suggestions!

PS this explains why there aren’t any red tomatoes in the photos.