I am dying to experiment a more effective non-lethal way of deterring birds, squirrels, bats, roof rats, tree rats, and perhaps deer and other critters.

The method that I want to try or experiment would be ideal for small home orchards, less than 5,000 square feet, where we can move the setup from one ripening tree to the next, that is, if you stagger your harvest dates on various trees. The method will be very hard to use on commercial orchard setup as the infrastructure and equipment costs could be disproportionate, but for hobbyists, these may be worthwhile. This is still untried at this stage, so perhaps others can try these ideas out and report of their effectivity.

The method would utilize ultrasonic sound from devices like this one sold at eBay:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200083706952&ssPageName=ADME:\B:WNASIF:US:75&refitem=&itemcount=0&refwidgetloc=&refwidgettype=osi_widget&isfro\mmerc=1

and you can find quite a lot of similar items ranging in several models and rices: http://search.stores.ebay.com/bird-repel_W0QQ_trksidZm37QQcatrefZC6QQcoactionZcompareQQcoentrypageZsearchQQcopagenumZ1QQfromZR10QQfsooZ1QQfsopZ1QQftrtZ1QQftrvZ1QQsabfmtsZ1QQsacatZQ2d1QQsaobfmtsZinsifQQsaprchiZQQsaprcloZQQsatitleZbirdQ2aQ20repelQ2aQQsbrexpZWD1SQQsifZ1QQsofpZ4QQssPageNameZWD1S


The ultrasonic device would deter some birds, rodents, deer and other animals and some of the models are AC powered, so that if you can use a bugzapper, there is no reason why you can't use them. They only consume less than 10 watts of continuous power, so are miser.

Let's just hope that the ultrasonic devices would be enough, but then I love Plan B in case it is not enough. I would also like to use strobe lights to deter the birds, and these are readily available at electronic store like Fry's electronics without the exhorbitant shipping and handling fees that plagued eBay items. I would ask knowledgeable clerks if they have something that has low wattage, with lights visible enough during the day, and can be reprogrammed for timing interval for the light flashes or the patterns of rotating lights. Some birds may be immune to ultrasonic sound as it would not be within their frequencies, but I am confident that most birds wouldn't like flashing lights, and birds hate motion especially with lights. To make sure the lights are turned off before dark, I would attach the power cord to weather-proof Christmas light timer that I have purchased several years back from Home Depot. The light timer is cheap, just around $5-10 at WalMart or $0.50 at garage sales. We don't want to raise the ire of our neighbors with Flashing lights during the evening, so I want to make sure of that. To direct the lights, aluminum foil would help so that it will be directed to your trees only and not to your neighbor's space.

I have found the ultasonic devices to be very effective against roof rats and pigeons after I installed one unit in my attic. I don't have squirrels though, but will be buying a weather-proof unit to try it out against the fruit rats, bats and hopefully birds. And if I found some cheap strobe lights will play with them too. And hopefully report after the season.

I too was getting a little weary of animal pressure and employed a few different methods of keeping them away from my crops. I've had problems w/ birds, rats, opposums, nutria but fortunately and amazingly no squirrels. Currantly I use a guard cat (very effective), netting, owls w/ moving heads, rat poison, a bb gun and this Bird Gard product:

http://www.northerntool.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_6970_8213_8213?cm_sp=Customer%20driven-_-Recently%20Viewed-_-Search%20Page

I considered the ultrasonic devices but read somewhere that birds either don't hear or don't pay attention to that high of a frequency. Maybe this is not totally true since it worked for your pigeon problem Joe.

I liked the Bird Gard product because it has and adjustable volume so you won't disturb the neighbors and a variety of different bird calls you can select from specific to your area. So far it has worked well against most of the local birds obviously irritating them and keeping them mostly off of my trees and fruit. The only birds that seem to get wise to it are the robins and mockingbirds those of which usually get shot. I move my unit around to keep them on their toes. The more expensive models have interchangeable chips and can be ordered with custom bird calls. I can't say this will work for those in other areas but just offer my experience with it so far.

But none of them have tried using strobe lights. I know that when police cars are intermittently flashing, flocks of birds are scared off.

My main concerns are rodents like roof rats, bats are easily targeted by ultrasonic range, so I don't think that products worth over $100 are really worth their while for the rodents, but for the birds you may be able to scare them off with cheapo (less than $20) intermittent strobe lights instead of the $500 products.

And the combo ultrasonic sound and strobe lights would be effective for both.

Would this hurt my Dogs ears? Because I would like to use this but dog's ears are very sensitive and I wouldn't want to make here uncomfortable.