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Pheasants attack the plums
Warthog
Posts: 15
Having a leisurely breakfast in bed, I noticed a large russet tail poking out from my older plum tree, so went outside to investigate. Around 8-10 young peasants erupted from the tree and grass around where they had been plundering my brilliant crop of Victoria plums, the first since I moved 3 years ago. The tree had to be moved with the building of an extension (not by me, rather roughly done by the builder and a hired digger) and has only just recovered. I have picked the rest of the crop to ripen indoors. Any ideas on how to deter the buggers?
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Pheasants aren't particularly bright birds so scaring them can be a challenge. They run rather than fly as they are heavy birds. Many of the normal things we do like CD's strung up don't mean a lot to a pheasant. A dog will shift them so will a cat, but cats usually catch pheasants with relative ease. Loud noise is a deterent but even then a pheasant will hunker down hoping to hide. So netting is really the only option, but even then some will get caught up in it. You obviously live in the country, so ask the game keeper who put the birds down for advice. He'll know his birds and how to keep them away.
I agree - speak to the gamekeeper or farmer - he'll be wanting to keep the pheasants on his land, not have them wandering off in search of tasty morsels. If he/she know's their job he/she'll alter the feeding stations/patterns to keep them away from your garden.
The pheasant shooting season starts at the end of the months, so pheasants will be a lot more wary then.
No partridges hiding in your pear tree I suppose? The partridge season started this month
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Thanks, people (like the partridge in a pear tree comment, well done!). I think netting is going to be the answer next year. Don't know who, if anyone, actually breeds them round here (North Pennines) but they are all over the place. Most of us hit one with the car at least once a year, very damaging - to the car, I mean! obviously damaging to the pheasant. They are totally annoying and, as you say, not all that bright. Why hang around on road verges and on the road itself when you have hundreds of acres of moorland and field to forage on?
They don't like noise you say:
Wear ear plugs in bed and fit some very noisy wind chimes in the tree.!
Only joking !
Seriously I sympathise and hope the netting works
Pheasants are bought in as chicks and reared by the farmer/gamekeeper. When they are big enough they are transferred into Release Pens where they are fed for a while and then released. They will continue to be fed in the area of the Release Pens in an attempt to keep them in that area, but when they're first released they're scatty adolescents and don't know where they are or what they're doing - this is usually when they stray onto the roads and get hit by traffic.
As soon as the shooting season starts they tend to hang around in deeper cover
You also get quite a few road casualties in early spring when their minds are on only one thing
Cock pheasants like to square up to each other in clearings - e.g. the middle of the road 
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
I'm unsure why the thought is that a gamekeeper has introduced the pheasants. We had a load of them at our last house. They bred every year at the house across from us - our only near neighbour. He fed them, and they visited us regularly for food too - we could hand feed them. They sometimes got run over but that's life and nature I'm afraid.
A barrier - canes/timber with wire netting or similar - round the tree will help keep them away. Put some other food out for them in a different part of the garden as well so that they get used to that instead of raiding your tree. As they get bigger, which is quite quickly, they'll fly less and stick to the ground more. They're basically fancy chickens, so they need a good run to get up in the air
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
Most farms where there is gamebird shooting will buy in birds each year. Some gamekeepers will hatch their own with bantams from eggs gathered from wild pheasant nests, but that's an expensive way nowadays. Pheasants also breed in the wild, but where you get a mass of young birds together it's likely that they're from a batch of freshly released ones.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
I'm sure there must be some sort of plum sauce (jus) that would go nicely with pheasant.
Pheasants can fly really quite high if they want to
They go very well with roast apples and Calvados
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
What time is high tea?