Fruit Decoys in the Strawberry Patch!

As with tomatoes, there are other eyes besides mine who are watching for ripening strawberries in my strawberry patch. When red appears, they go and eat it, leaving me with half-pecked berries...very frustrating! So...I read a little trick to try. It involves rocks and red paint! Now I still don't want to hurt the birds, but I do want to severely discourage them. My daughter and I chose about 20 strawberry-sized rocks and painted them bright red. It took a couple sessions to paint all the sides of the rocks, but when they were done they looked pretty good! I shared about half of them with a friend, who also had been having birds pecking her strawberries. The rocks were to be placed around the strawberry plants to look like ripening strawberries. The theory is that the birds will see the red color and think its a strawberry, come check and find its only a rock. After a few disappointments, they leave your strawberry patch alone, and the real strawberries can ripen in peace.Now, I heard that the best time to put them out was as the strawberries turn white...which is right before they turn red. If the red rocks are put out too much in advance, then the birds get used to them and will notice when the real berries turn red. The results this year were pretty good!