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Birds at the marina

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skihuey2183

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Any suggestions for keeping the birds from using our beautiful new Benni as a " DUMPING Ground". We have the playpen cover, but i dont want to have to clean it everytime before we head out on the lake. well be takin the boat out tomorrow, between 75 and 80 degrees. Love , love ,love Cali.! Thanks
 
Skihuey2183,

I have tried a fake owl and a fake hawk on my dock and neither one of them worked.

I would also be interested in a solution.

Lefty
 
Some buckshot would work. :D
 
I have hung small foil pie plates from the bimini top that moves in the wind that has worked to some degree......The birds are smarter than you think...........
 
That gullsweep thing seems good in theory.
 
Are they roosting on an overhead board? If they have a place to land there is a product called "bird spikes", I think, that tie-wraps to the landing spot and keeps them from landing. I know Grainger sells them. Steve
 
I've seen everything at our lake.

Pie plates, owls, beach balls, streamers, cd discs tied to the bimini .......

The WORST boat had a flock of seagulls using it as a roost.

They are the ones that tied 3-4 beachballs on a rope run down the middle of the cover. A slight wind caused them to roll back and forth and actually seemed to work pretty good. The birds moved on to other boats .... It looked a little tacky, but the crap covered cover looked worse when it had 3" of waste piled up on it ....... not to mention the white streaks all over the sides of the toon.
 
We have great blue herons that like to roost on our docks/lifts and they are beautiful creatures to watch while they fish there.

The good news is they do scare the heck out of the seagulls and starlings we also have in abundance.

The bad news is their typical output is at least 10x per bird vs the same seagulls.

Unfortunately all of these birds adapt almost instantly to the mitigations you try, so rotation of techniques is about the only way. Those fishing line spreader systems seem to work well but aren't very practical when you have to clean, remove, etc. Our neighbor had the Gull-B-Gone with rotating aluminum cat dishes and after a while the fowl would literally roost on the spinning arms to slow it down and take in the 360 degree view!
 
Thanks for all of the feedback. sounds like I am not alone in this dumping club. Im going to try the refelctive strips for now and see how it works.
 
lefty said:
Skihuey2183,

I have tried a fake owl and a fake hawk on my dock and neither one of them worked.

I would also be interested in a solution.

Lefty
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I live in a neighborhood that has a lot of "cedar" homes and the first week we moved in, I was awakened to the sound of wood peckers on the house.... it never ended and the damage these birds did was incredible...my neighbor was also having the same problem and he bought a large "wooden" owl that he attached to side of his house... the woodpeckers beat tore that owl up in about 2 days.... I actually ended up going to the garden dept. at home depot and bought several of those "inflateble owls, and hung them up around the house... just the slightest breeze would make them move and that seemed to do a decent job of keeping the woodpeckers away.. oh also bought some life like rubber snakes, they seemed to help also...you might want to look into that.. Good luck with it all.
 
geese are a problem at some locations on our lake and it seems that no matter what you do they eventually get used to it. One person had a speaker system that periodically emits the bleet of a goose in distress supposedly the other geese hear it and flee. Worked great for about 2 weeks till they got used to it.
 
Geese are so over populated at our lake they had to shut the city beach down last year to high levels of bacteria. I work from home and look in the backyard all the time. I took an old hunting arrow, attached a washer at the end and use it for a bottle rocket launch pad. They sure don't hang around long when I turn the skies hell fire red!!
 
I keep firecrackers on the porch for the geese. They sure don't like them. They nearly distroyed our lawn while we were away last month and I was not a happy camper when we got home. :angry:
 
cwag911 said:
I keep firecrackers on the porch for the geese. They sure don't like them. They nearly distroyed our lawn while we were away last month and I was not a happy camper when we got home. :angry:
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They were probably filling up on your grass so they can fly north and leave the remains on my yard! The ice is about 20% off the lake and there are already ducks, geese and swans already all over the open water. I guess it's all part of...lakeliving
 
Thanks for the link Bama.
 
i use a gullsweep and i also use a gator or snake rubber replica. the little gator looks so real it scares kid walking by.
 
Hehe, "oh no Mr. Conservation Officer, I was just trying to hit the ledge, definitely not the bird!! Don't you know that would be illegal? " haha It just might work!
 
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