You work all summer long to instill your grapes with just the right flavor essence. Birds steal more than grapes. They steal your flavor.

1. Bird peck causes off-flavors in your wine. When deciding to use bird netting or not, most vineyard managers think only in terms of crop loss: “How many dollars of grapes am I losing to birds per acre, and does that level of loss justify the use of bird netting.”
However, more and more vineyard managers are realizing that the loss of yield caused by birds is only part of the story. It’s the grapes that birds peck and leave behind that cost the most.

Bird-pecked grapes harbor bacterial and fungal pathogens that alter the flavor of your wine. Even a small amount of bird peck damage can make a big difference in taste, ruining the true flavor essence you spent an entire growing season working to instill in your grapes.

The winemaker faced with bird-pecked grapes goes to great – and very expensive – lengths to overcome those off-flavors… and no matter what there’s no way to ever recapture the true flavor essence of your grapes.

2. Birds steal more grapes than growers realize! Grape growers who start using Bare-Hand Bird Nets realize an amazing thing: They were losing more grapes to birds than they thought!

They never realized how many grapes they were losing to birds until they started protecting them.

3. Bird netting is the only reliable way to prevent crops loss and off-flavors caused by bird peck damage. The old methods of bird deterrence- noise cannons, bird scare tape, lethal shooting (illegal, but all too common), “scare” balloons, falconry, etc.- cannot prevent excessive crop loss, and they leave fruit exposed to the bird peck damage that harms flavor.

We used to sell bird scare tape… until a customer sent us a bird nest constructed primarily of our reflective silver/red tape. Like scare balloons, birds become acclimated to these motion and visual deterrence methods, and they quickly lose the what limited effectiveness they might have had.

We’ve all seen video of birds perched on noise cannons, fly up when they hear the solenoid switch signal and impending blast, then drop back down on the cannon just as relaxed as you please.

Falconry? Romantic, yes. Effective, no. Many birds simply hide deeper in the grapevine canopy – continuing to eat your grapes – while falcons soar over head. Falconry cannot provide round the clock protection – birds and their handlers need to take breaks.

Only bird netting provides complete, 24/7 protection from crop loss and bird peck damage.

4. Bird netting isn't going to cost your state millions of dollars in the process of protecting your grapes!

Wildfire in California vineyard could have been caused by 'bird-bomb' firework