Koi pond – bird protection net
Okay, I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but we’ve had a serious issue with crows coming in and treating our backyard garden fish like their own personal sushi restaurant.
We’ve tried several different things when we were using large ceramic bowls with mixed results. The birds are strong, and would pull the weights off, the cover screen, rip out the plants, and then feast away <sigh>
Now that we’ve gone to the pond, a simple screen was not going to be an option, so we decided to go with the green and blue netting. This netting is pretty popular for placing over trash bags to keep the birds out, and we thought it might work well here.
The problem is that you cannot just lay the net over the pond due to the plants and the size. The net would surely have fallen into the water and been a problem for the fish, and later for the plants as they start to sprout up through it.
So, I devised a simple frame constructed of garden stakes, 2 wooden and 2 metal with rubber covers.
koi pond bird protection net frame
Here’s what it looks like with the net over it:
koi pond bird protection net 1
koi pond bird protection net 2
You can see there’s an additional pole along the left side of the net. That makes it easier for one person to be able to place or remove the net, and it also adds a little weight on the edge to make it more difficult for the birds.
So far, this has worked perfectly and we’ve lost no fish, yet…
It’s not too difficult to take it off so you can enjoy it a bit better, and actually the net squares are big enough that you can see through it pretty well if you don’t really feel like peeling it off.
