Artificial strawberries

I have some strawberry plants in the garden, but I don't get many strawberries.   The birds, however, do quite well.   I don't pick the berries until they are ripe, that is, red all over, but the birds seem happy to peck out the red bits from the semi-ripe ones, leaving the remaining green or white bits to rot.

Anita was reading on the interweb the other day, that if you take some stones that are about the same size as strawberries, paint them red, and scatter them among the strawberry plants before the fruits ripen, the birds quickly learn that there is no nourishment in these little red things, and leave the strawberries alone once they are ripe.  So she is painting some up for me.

It has to be worth a try.