This is how some artsy, craftsy gardeners are painting rocks to look like strawberries to trick birds to leave their real strawberries alone.  If I can find a durable, lighter weight material I'd like to try making faux figs, and hang them like ornaments before the real figs are ripe.  What do you think? 
  I'm pretty optimistic about future figs considering that one night my garage blew a breaker and my yearling figs got a very cold night without a heater.  I use little egg incubator thermometer and it recorded a memory of 26F but it could have been much colder.

Wow!  Really cold where you are!  I like the faux fig idea!  Actually, I love it!  So now your big job is to tell us where to find ornaments to paint and disappoint the birds.

I know some people put rubber snakes in their trees and they think it works... owls....... all fake.

Suzi

To protect grapes from our feathery friends many people use owl statues perched near their grapes, recordings of bird distress sounds, loud gas canons or fly kites that look like birds of prey.
 
I have tried the bird distress sounds and bird of prey kite that people find amusing to see it fly around.  But birds being much smarter than people realize are only fooled for a short while.

The only foolproof (95%) way is to use bird netting and it is a lot of work/hastle to put on and work around.

For me I figure the birds also need to eat so my strategy is to plant more so there is enough for everybody!

decoys might work

http://figs4funforum.websitetoolbox.com/post/unknown-spanish-red-6022040

I tried small red Christmas ornaments as cherry decoys last year. Didn't work.
Good luck, and let us know how it goes.