What's eating my grapesdisease/weather/birds?

Hi, I don't usually venture here but thought someone might be able to identify this problem. My grapes have fruited for the first time this year. (My parents gave me cuttings and I don't know what variety they are, just that they're purple, small and, believe it or not, beautifully scented when ripe.) Anyway, as the grapes start to colour, they develop these great big holes in the top--you can see straight thru to the seeds inside. Is this fruitfly? Some sort of rot caused by the humidity (I'm in the subtropics)? Or could it be from birds pecking at the ripening grapes? (I've never actually seen any on the vines but they certainly like the blackberries and strawberries.) What do you think?

My guess would be bird damage especially if the unripened grapes are left alone. If you can't encase the entire vine with a cover of some sort, you might try tying paper bags over each cluster.

That's good news actually, because it can so easily be prevented. There's certainly been a lot of feeding in the backyard--the bats are eating the bananas (too high to cover) and the birds get any of the berries that aren't net-protected. Thanks.

I would imagine a bat would go after grapes if they were after the bananas. I have many bats around me and have never had my grapes touched by them but I grow a local grape that is pretty much indestructible. Not wine grapes, eating grapes. Might want to take a look at the grapes after dark and see if there are any bats after them.

It's certainly possible--I can hear bats at night, most nights, in the area--but I would have thought they'd have damaged the vines themselves as they fed on the grapes. (The vines are still quite small.) Anyway, it does seem to be the result of animal life rather than insects or disease, so I'm grateful for that because it can be prevented without chemicals. I'll just have to be more vigilant next year, now that I know that the grapes will mature in this climate. (Who would have thought they'd ripen in the first month summer? It *has* been a hot spring though ...) I've also got some mangoes beginning to ripen for the first year. I guess I should paper-bag those too.

I couldn't figure out where my green peaches were going, it was bugging me for a while. Then one day my dogs were chasing a squirrel out of the peach trees and that's when it dawned on me that it was the squirrels grabbing the green peaches. Don't know why squirrels like unripe peaches but they will go right after them. Mystery solved. I thought at first I was having some sort of bug or disease problem, found out later that it's pretty common.

No squirrels here :-) Our equivalent is possums, although there are none in this area. It's always good when a mystery is solved, isn't it?

We have possums too, not sure what they really eat. The dogs treed one a couple of times and he moved across the lagoon. I can hear him moving around at night or at least I think it's him. It's forest and something moves around slowly at night, from the noise it makes it must be bigger than a squirrel, I guess it could be deer but I'm prety sure it's the possum that was in my back yard. Also have occasional alligators and snake in the lagoon. Whole wild kingdom going on a few feet back from my house. LOL.