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I live in a neighborhood in California that has a number of parrots that, presumably, escaped from captivity sometime ago and have since multiplied in number. They are all the same kind of parrot, these noisy little green guys.


In addition to the noise, these guys like to snack on my apple and persimmon trees. I've seen parrots sitting on the branches taking bites out of my apples and while I haven't seen them on my persimmon tree, now that the persimmons are starting to ripen I see bite marks in them that are identical to the bite marks in the apples.

How do I keep parrots off of my fruit trees? My first thought was to get a plastic owl but I'm uncertain if that would work. These parrots seem fearless and have skirmishes with much bigger crows all the time. (Now that is a fun scene to watch, a crow being attacked by a pack of parrots.)

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They're smart birds. Might be an uphill battle. –  DA. Oct 8 '12 at 18:55
+1 for noisy little green guys –  kevinsky Oct 9 '12 at 13:23

2 Answers 2

We are also suffering from the same problem in India.

I am from Shimla and I have an apple orchard. Every year these parrots destroy around 1 ton of apples in my farm.

Some expert advised me to put balloons on the trees with birds' eyes painted on them. This will scare off the parrots.

I am trying ths method in the hope it might work.

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Please report back to let us know if it works. –  Niall C. Jul 1 at 17:54

That's a difficult question, I never saw someone with parrots problem... I think that this problem is solved with parrots as any other birds... so I would wrap the trees with a net (which could be expensive) or try to get them away with CDs acting as scarecrow.

I know that there are ecological repellents for pigeons, but I don't know if it works with parrots, and there are also some that are sound based, like this: http://www.bird-x.com/.

Hope I could help you. Good luck.

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Believe it or not, we have the same problem in London, particularly West London. The plum trees are stripped every year by the wild parakeets. Some people net the trees, but that's only possible on smaller trees, and the mesh on the net needs to be very fine and close. Net curtains work pretty well, I've discovered. –  Bamboo Oct 8 '12 at 10:30

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