bird tape

the bed of black eagle wheat out back has taken some shots from critters and the weather...but that hasn't stopped it from carrying on its season and it is beginning to ripen quickly...while the birds seem to be fairly indifferent to the rye the wheat is another matter...energy dense seeds ( why we use them ) they are starling magnets and i have been seeing them around..so i decided to deploy some bird tape...metalized polyester, it is shiny and has a prism effect...i stretched it loosely across the bed from the corner posts and put a couple of twists in it before tying it off to the opposite corner...when the breeze blows the tape moves distracting and deterring the birds...the sun glints off the metalized surface as well adding another layer of bird deterrence...it makes them nervous...for a while...like a scarecrow, the tape will need to be moved about once a week to keep the little dinosaurs from acclimating to it to the point hey can ignore it...it is effective and non lethal...two pluses to outweigh the fact that it's plastic...on the north side of the house the ramp flowers are just about fully open...sometime in august ( these are slow movers...one of the sloths of the plant world...once the seed matures and works its way into the soil it can take two years to germinate...no record but slow none the less )those buds will flower and by late september into october there will ( hopefully ) be round, black seeds to harvest...the season progresses...more as it comes up.