What are these scars on my fruit trees?

Question

I planted a few fruit tree saplings, apples, pears, peaches, apricots, plums, cherries. Within one year of planting, all of them, and i mean all of them started having these cuts or scars on them, some of them have lots and lots, others only have a few, and they don't seem to be healing. I don't know what causes it. I have to admit i neglected them the first summer, so my first thought was a drought caused it, but it looks like more of these scars appeared later, even when i regularly watered the trees. I don't think it's some disease, since all of the trees are affected regardless of species. We do have some eurasian magpies roaming around, maybe they pecked away at the trees, but it's hard to believe since there's so many scars. What do you think it could be? Will this kill the trees? And how could i prevent this happening for future saplings?

Answer 1

Those look like that cut that a cicada makes to lay its eggs.

Answer 2

My best guess would be sunscald - characteristic damage to young trees without adequate shading and no protective steps taken.

That tends to be more on the side facing the equator - South to Southwest in Northern hemisphere, North to Northwest in the Southern hemisphere. If that does not match the pattern of damage, probably some other cause.