Starlings - not our friends

Starlings are beautiful, very intelligent birds and were even chosen as Bird of the Year 2018 in Germany. Nevertheless, the’re not really our friends. Like many other bird species they like it a lot around Lake Neusiedl. Alltough many of them live here around the year, every autumn they are visited by lots of collegues that prefer to spend their summers farther to the north. In that time they form swarms up to kilometers in length that can even darken the sky. And that many beaks need to eat.

Sweet, ripe and especially red grapes are irresistible to the birds. If a swarm settles in a vineyard there won’t be anything left to harvest only half an hour later. So we have to do something to protect our grapes. The best method there is, is protecting the grapes with nets as shown in the picture above. In this case, the net has been cut a little bit short when it was mounted. That’s unfortunate, but on the other hand it clearly shows that the nets do hold their promise. Just look at the pictures below. Under the net, grapes are nice and healty, without a net there is nothing left for us to harvest!