Yes. Birds get caught in it, and so do snakes, turtles and frogs. Slack is the one variable that decides it. Almost every case of birds stuck in netting starts with a net that has gone loose somewhere, and loose mesh is a tangle an animal can push a head into. Bird netting entanglement is not a freak accident. It is what happens when a taut net turns baggy and nobody walks out to look.
The net came off the sweet cherry tree by the driveway in one night of wind. I found it balled in the grass with a robin working one wing against the mesh, still alive, still fighting. I had thrown that net over the canopy in June and never clipped it shut at the trunk. Netting blows off rows and off trees when nothing holds it down, and that is how a fitted net becomes a loose bundle you would never hang on purpose.
A secured net works because it gives a bird a flat, stretched surface. The bird hits it, feels a wall, and leaves. There is no pocket to put a head into, and no give for a foot to hook. Slack breaks that. A sagging net moves the moment it is touched, so it wraps instead of pushing back, and every struggle after that pulls the mesh tighter around a wing or a coil.
Wind is what makes the slack in the first place. A net that fit your tree in June stops fitting after a few gusty nights, because the edges lift, the mesh slides down one side, and the whole thing settles into folds. None of that shows from the kitchen window. You have to go out and put a hand on the net to know what shape it is in.
Illinois Extension puts numbers on the risk. In Wisconsin, 22 fox snakes were found entangled in erosion control blankets on a single June day, and 16 were released while the rest had died. Two studies of erosion control products found that the ones containing plastic mesh were the most dangerous to snakes, and large snakes fared worst of all. Animals caught in mesh may die quickly from sun exposure, or hurt themselves trying to escape. It is the same plastic mesh you drape over a cherry tree.
Humane bird netting is less about which product you buy and more about how you hang it. Mesh size is where the shopping attention goes, but tension and closure do the real work. A net stretched over a frame or a set of hoops, held off the fruit and shut along the ground, keeps birds out and keeps everything else from finding a way in.
- Pull it tight: Stretch the net over a frame or hoops so it sits off the leaves and fruit with no belly hanging anywhere.
- Close the bottom: Run the net all the way to the ground and tie off every end so nothing can slip in underneath it.
- Clip the seams: Clips and ties are what stop a night of wind from lifting a fitted net into a loose bundle.
- Look after storms: Check the net after wind or rain, and again whenever you are working near your tree, then free anything caught.
- Take the net down once the fruit is picked, because a net left up through winter goes on catching animals when nobody is watching for them.
If that routine is more than you want to take on, skip the mesh. Wildlife safe netting stays safe only with an owner who keeps checking it, and an abandoned net is worse than no net. The friendlier swaps are loosely woven wheat straw or coconut fiber with large holes, stiff woven wire fencing such as chicken wire, and plain visual deterrents. I would fence a young tree with chicken wire and eat the losses on a mature one, because a big tree gives up plenty of fruit and still fills the buckets.
Read the full article: Bird Netting That Works Without Trapping
