Bird and animal loving softies, would you like to state the case this year for sparing the apple defiling doves in my backyard?

No. You can not reason with terrorists.

The wife says that hanging shiny streamers from the branches might deter the brigands, but I think hanging a fat dove corpse from the clothesline might serve a more useful illustration of my concern.

As far as I know, owls eat doves, so you could attempt to buy one of those owl figurines that hoot and place it in or near the tree.

At the very least, you could shoot the BB guns just off to the side of a bird instead of killing it. I’m not sure how smart the birds are, so I don’t know how likely it would be that they’d respond to a murdered comrade. :P

Spray with cayan hot powder.

Nah – I may enjoy my birds and love animals, but I don’t have a problem with hunting and have personally enjoyed shooting the pigeons who ate our crops. Have at it! Squab is good eats. Tip: initially they break and zoom horizontally along the ground to try to confuse the predator, so aim low.

Owl figurines, sparkly streamers, and nets are what seem to kind of work for my blueberry growing neighbors.

Mmmmm…. I was driving through the Safeway parking lot and noticed a ravenous flock of street pigeons tossing and tearing into a chicken drumstick. Now I would prefer to believe that the gangsters were after the breading coating the limb of their former cousin, but perhaps they can be trained to relish their kin “on the hoof”.

A couple of days ago, I just saw one of our chickens eat the head of a bird that one of the cats had killed. At first I just thought she was confused about what she was eating, but the way she ran off with it in her mouth when I tried to get it from her definitely indicated otherwise. It reminded me exactly of what a cat would do. I was both amused and creeped out.

I seem to recall either hearing or reading about the successful use of nets to cover the trees (or bushes) which keeps the birds from getting access to the fruit.

But I’m far far from being a gardening expert. But it sounded logical to me.

I seriously doubt that the dead body of one of their kin would do much deterrence. They’d likely think “oh, goody, more for me.”. Just a thought.

There was also an ingenious method used for keeping birds off of airplane runways (where they could get sucked into jet engines) that I saw a news feature about.

From time to time they would call up a man with trained sheep dogs to come for awhile to stalk and chase those birds as if he (the dog) was a predator.

Sheep dogs or border collies have this look known as ” the eye” which is used to control sheep because it makes him look like a predator even tho he’s trained to NOT harm them. He just stares at them with that look in the eye of a wolf or any predator.

This same look and quality worked really well on keeping the runways clear because word got around in the bird community that there were safer places to gather, free of those creepy looking predators stalking them.

Don’t know if that would work for doves but if you’re ever considering getting a new pet, a sheepdog or border collie might be a good potential choice.

I just found it a fascinating bit of animal psychology.

For reasons similar to the result above from @Buttonstc, a motion detector owl might prove to be effective.

As far as your Daisy, I realize you do not want to hit them, only scare them off. Check your local game laws for doves, and then check this recipe!

But squab are baby pigeons. And the ones served in restaurants when I was a kid were from huge chicken sized pigeon breeds like red carneau.

@stanleybmanly Toung-in-cheek, in case of an accidental kill.