Oh how birds, 'specially cardinals, love to take one good peck of the fig, just enough to spoil it, before flying off, like Brad Pitt (he always does this in his films) making sure to poo on your auto as a parting gift.

birds should be band from the land!

I net my trees. It's a lot more effective than organza bags and you can protect the entire tree, not just a couple at a time.

Feeling smug this AM. I picked 3 perfectly ripe figs that fell into my hand with zero bird pecks in them. I spotted 3 more ripening, removed the bags, transferred them to new figs and it's gonna be a good breakfast!

As far as netting our trees. Impossible! In ground and BIG. They don't make netting that big. We have some for our vineyard, commercial type, but it's just too much of a pain on big trees.

Once the main crops start gifting us figs, I'll be happy to share with critters. Waay to many for us to eat all at once.

Hopefully this critter doesn't figure out how to get over the chain link fence! We were checking our veggie garden this morning and she came wandering down the ravine. Since it's gonna be a scorching 115 degrees today, she probably wants water. There is a seasonal stream down there, but, it has to be dry now.

How high is the fence? I've seen deer clear an 8 ft. fence with ease.

oh dear. It's 5', but we've lived here 3 years and never even seen a deer. It would be hard for any deer to get a running leap because it's a steep hill going down to the ravine, and it would be an up jump for them OVER a few boulders. Coyotes are out too. We heard them last night. They probably will scare any deer back up to the top of the hills. Fingers crossed.

If you're having a drought, they're coming down for the water. Coyotes are nocturnal hunters, while deer are day time browsers.