Yesterday and today, I noticed that a couple of Blue Jay birds decided to raise a family
somewhere near my back yard - they were carrying some white nesting stuff on their beaks...
At first I thought that it was blessing; but then it all dawned on me - wait a minute -
that white stuff are vinyl tags off my fig trees ... I just went out to inspect, and
sure enough, my fears came through. Most of the few newly potted figs that I had just
brought outside had theirs tags missing - ripped out by them strong BJ beaks.
I took corrective action; but I will still be ending up with some more 'orphaned' figs...

George they do have a way of aggravating us !! I paint (sharpies) the names on scion besides tagging.
Haven't had birds take tags off but I use metal tags. 
I brushed our husky this past weekend and let the fur "fly" in the wind around our yard ,later noticed birds carrying fur in their beaks.

Brush your dogs George, and if you don't have dogs  then brush neighbor's dogs, :)

Well, at least Blue Jays are carnivores, they eat baby birds and fight with cats... meaning you will have less birds poking at your precious commodities and less cats chasing birds and going through pots while after birds.

I am writing all the names on branches too with Silver Sharpie markers... they are permanent.

I have only been dive-bombed by the (in)famous Mocking bird.
Twice; once locally and once while vacating in FL,
both cases while unknowingly walking nearby a nested tree.
I was hit from behind on the head and it felt like someone threw a (surprise) little rock at me.
I have seen videos of them Mocking birds dive-bombing (startled) people/dogs/cats/etc..

Our side yard Mockingbird resident lets us know when we're too close . Cardinals are my nemesis- vying for ripe  figs. Mesh bags do wonders although they have tried to peck through the bags !

If a bird ever mocks me I am going to spank it and send it to its' nest.

LOL Rafed... I hope I'm not the only one who tried to visualize that.

LOL James,

I remember when I was a kid I tried to steal one of the Blue Jays offspring and I was attacked by four or five of the elder Blue Jays.

Had to drop it and run.

My bird nemesis is the Catbird - they lately somehow learned that (foreign) fig fruit is also delicious (besides other fruit/insects).

@Patee
I always had local/resident Red Cardinals here and I do love their very early spring-breaking song and
later just-being-here in contrast/along with it white winter snow. No fig damage so far; pl. keep it that way..

Ive had squirrels steal the tags off of my grape vines

Sorry this happened to you.

Hopefully you have a list of them all so that there should be a small group of possibilities for each fig and you can tell what they are when they ripen fruit.  Each of mine has a tag on the tree and a pot # written on the pot.  Each pot # is cross indexed to its name in my database.  It would work as well in a notebook.  For next time.

Hi Gorgi,
I'm sure you've taken a photo of them sleeping and when you brought them out ... Don't you ?
If you, by the shape, color of pot, you can find the information ...

Don't take this in a mean way George .

But i would have paid admission to see your facial expression when you realized what they had
in between there beaks.

Lol, I got a good laugh from this post. Hope you can figure out what's what, those pesky birds will get into everything!

Wow, that's a first.  I have quite a few trees with just vinyl pot stakes recently moved outside.  I've never had such a problem like this before and maybe I've got more suitable things for nests readily available on my farm (lots of weeds, twigs, etc.).  Still, need to do something to make sure such a problem doesn't occur here!

As far as mocking birds, there is a fun way to mock them, I learned about 40 years ago.  As a teenager I was getting somewhat annoyed by a noising mocking bird and I got a cassette recorded and decided to record the racket.  Then, just for the heck of it, I replayed it with the player on the window sill.  My brother and I had a fun time watching the original bird dive bomb the window continuously.  He was very agitated by the new rival!  Would be suitable material for YouTube these days, I imagine.

Both Mocking and Red Cardinals are very territorial birds.

I once watched 2 Mocking birds doing a real aggressive combat on a street tree in front of my house.
Suddenly, both dropped to the ground. One flew off, while the other remained on the ground.
I went to investigate, he/she was dead as a (still warm) door nail.
There was no signs of blood - not sure what killed it - blunt blows or the fall?!?

I once also noticed one female Red Cardinal doing combat with her own
reflection in my neighbor's driveway parked car side view mirror...

I'm no fan of hummingbirds after being dive bombed in our vineyard one day.  You'll never catch me feeding those evil creatures!  We get nests from some red breasted birds in our patio ceiling fans often.  JD gets rid of the nests, but the birds keep coming back.  Then, no nest, they still lay eggs up there that roll off onto the patio.  Splat!!  You think they'd get a clue, but they don't.  It's not like there are no trees around here.  On this property alone there are 12 huge pines and 14 huge palm trees.  Ceiling fans? 

Suzi

there's a reason why there is a term "bird brain". talking about which, i need to get some plant tags.