It helps to know your friends and enemies in the garden. That knowing includes more than identification, but includes their habits. I noticed how many birds I have around the yard and gardens. .....Bluejays, sparrows, robins an occasional Cardinal, Blackbirds, Finches, and occasional Woodpeckers. I don't know how much this affects the garden bugs. I do know that the Robins like my berries and the Blackbirds like to eat on my sweet corn. I put nylon footies on the first 2 plantings of sweetcorn ears...save for a few ears. I saw a striped cucumber beetle out in the field, but none so far in the gardens. I saw 4 or 5 spotted cucumber beetles in the Hubbard squash over a quarter mile away from the home gardens. I understand that these are brought in on southern winds so I can't fully control those. I have seen no squash bugs nor SVB. I saw 4 CPB early and 1 adult later and squished a few larva. I have seen 2 JBs so far. For squash bugs...At the near end of the season the bugs will gather on the last remaining green leaves and defective fruits. Stomp them totally then...it really, really works. For striped cucumber beetles...The first batch [overwintering ones] may show up here about May 5 - 15th. It is difficult to catch these so I would spray Sevin on any cucurbit at that time if any showed up. The plants are not blooming then!! If you kill off the first batch, you may not have so many on the second batch about the first of July. If any showed up on the second batch, I would dispatch them carefully by lightly spraying on a few leaves at dusk. For CPB...watch for them real early and squish them before they can lay eggs. They show up just after potato planting time and if you have any volunteer potato plants that are early, these are a good trap for the first ones to emerge. I have sometimes been indunated by corn root worm beetles that likely emerged from neighboring corn fields. These usually show up on the last planting or two of sweet corn and can quickly ruin leaves and silks. My thinking is to be preventive and not need insecticides..However, it seems to cause more trouble in the long run to be highly ridgid rather than "a stitch in time saves 900"

Are you sure the birds are starting the holes? or are they just taking advantage of an opening. My guess is that what you really have is... rats. They will cut into the oranges. Then the birds come along and take advantage of where the rats have opened up an orange. My best way to deal with rats is cats. Unfortunately there is always person who thinks that because a cat is outside, that it is homeless. Then they catch it and "try to find it a home" But if you can get the neighbors to leave them alone, they can do some very find pest control. They also chase birds by the way. An outdoor cat will do a lot to help get rid of them. Rats will usually get into the tree at night. One enterprising young man I knew got together with his friend and they got night vision goggles and a BB gun and camped out and hunted all the rats out. Can't do that in the city but that worked for them. We lost our family cat about a year or so ago. In just a month we had a rat problem. We got 2 more from the pound, kept them inside until they felt at home, then they got to go outside. End of rat problem. One even catches a gopher now and then. GOOD kitty!

We live on the edge of a wooded valley. At night the deer come out of the valley, through my yard and to the farmer's field next to our acreage. We have lived here for 13 years now and have had the 'privilege' of dealing with the deer. Like Cole, we also hunt and will eat deer meat but the hunting season is only on for a few weeks in the fall and there are too many deer here for us to eat anyways. Around the large garden at the end of our lane we put up an eight foot fence and it works 100%. We used stucco wire for the bottom 5 feet and then a single strand of wire each foot above that. Now I can grow raspberries, strawberries, peas, carrots, beets, lettuce, etc etc. In the yard closer to the house I had to do something else since an eight foot fence wasn't an option. When googling possible solutions I came across this fact...deer do not like the smell of the protein that is in eggs. One of the large wholesale nurseries somewhere in the States was using this solution with great results... Fill a 4 litre milk jug with water almost to the top and then add one beaten egg. Shake it to mix and pour into your sprayer. This solution will need to be added after each rain or heavy dew. Some recipes will ask you to add garlic, cayenne pepper, tabasco sauce, etc etc...but you don't need to go to the expense of adding them since it doesn't make it any more effective. I have also seen similar recipes call for letting the egg solution sit for a few days to rot so that the deer will be deterred by the smell of the rotten egg. Also, some recipes call for using 2-4 eggs in the same amount of water I use one in. The one egg per jug is all that is needed and works just excellent. I mix and immediately spray on as I am walking through the gardens, looking at what is blooming. If there is some left and it does sit for a few days then I spray the plants but stand upwind from the spray. Brenda

Thank you for responding, it's been a heavy hearted day. I did take some pics, then I got some waterproof foil tape and wrapped it loosely around the trunk, only adhering the tape back onto itself (so no adhesive on trunk.) We also cut up some holographic poster board into strips and hung strips around the tree...that's supposed to scare the birds off. I took down the feeders completely, with a very heavy heart and will put them back up in a few days....on another area of the property. Unfortunately, I also have another new tree in the backyard which also has lichen growing on it, so I don't want to put those feeders near there. The feeders won't be anywhere in my viewing area, which is a big bummer for me. We couldn't get the reflective tape or holographic strips and into the upper 3rd of the tree and we saw a woodpecker land...however, the bird left soon thereafter, since there was no food around. At the same time, we saw a male and female Baltimore Oriole land on the tree and I just about swooned...we have not seen them before! I do think I could get some orange out for them and the woodpeckers would not be interested, right?