What do you do to fend off the birds?

Last year I was on a dock and it was great. No birds. The previous year I was on a mooring and as you can see from the photo the birds had a field day. I could live with them If I could just keep them off the top of the flybridge enclosure. This year I am replacing the soft top on the flybridge and am looking at ideas like netting to keep the birds at bay as I am back on the mooring this year. I have tried the Gull wings/spiders/flags and such but no luck. The birds love to bring crabs to the boat and among other things I find a lot of chicken bones. Not sure where they come from?

I don't know where they got it, but we saw a very cool motion senor attached to a yard sprinkler. It worked very well to scare off gulls.

Tom-

There was a boat in our marina that had a sort of helicopter-blade thingy mounted over it's flying bridge enclosure. The blades were actually thin rods of spring steel (I assume) about four or five feet long with a small paddles or wind vanes on the ends. The wind made this thing rotate. It was shiny and moving most of the time and I don't recall ever noticing a gull sitting on top of this boat.

I've never seen the owner of this boat so have had no chance to ask what it was or where he got it. The boat is still there (for sale) but the whirly thing is gone now. The owner's either taken it down or perhaps the storm winds we get through here in the winter took it down for him. In any event it seemed to work as advertised when it was in place and functioning.

Here's a piece of seagull trivia I learned years ago when we were filming at one of Seattle's big landfills. I noticed that most of the landfill had parallel rows of poles about 20 feet high over it with wires strung along the tops of the poles. I also noticed that the 357,609 seagulls that were fighting over the garbage being dumped were only in the actual dump area where there were no poles and wires.

I asked our contact what the poles and wires were for. He said that seagulls will not land where they cannot circle down. So the rows of poles and wires were set just close enough together that they would appear to the seagulls to be too close together to permit a circling landing. So they would not land on any part of the landfill that was under the wires.

Apparently, and from what I saw that day, it works.

I have no idea what a practical boat application might be for this factoid.

gull wing

Marin, what you describe sounds like the Gull Wing. They seem to be effective on smaller tops as long as you have a good supply of wind. On a larger top like mine you can not get the coverage needed. My top is about 8 foot by 12 foot. Where ever the Gull wind can not sweep the birds will roost.

A quick look on the internet uncovered a device called the GullSweep, which is what I believe the device I described was. Gullsweep, the finest bird deterrent for boats

Don't know if this is similar to the Gull Wing you mentioned.

The boat in our marina is a 38' Bayliner and the flying bridge enclosure looks more or less like yours. The sweep extended out beyond the sides of the enclosure top but not the ends.

Greetings,
Mr. Marin. Ya, typical. Why couldn't they have employed Americans instead of Poles? Granted, there are not too many 20' foot tall Americans but surely they could have stacked them up. Hopefully they used good ol' American wire and not that cheap Chinese stuff.

Shoot one or two and leave their littlel carcasses for a day or two. That seems to dissuade them.

RT Firefly said:

Greetings,
Mr. Marin. Ya, typical. Why couldn't they have employed Americans instead of Poles?

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That's a good question, RT, and I actually asked it. The explanation I was given by the landfill manager was that the task of standing motionless in a straight line and holding up a wire is too complex and difficult for most Americans. Sort of like rubbing your head and chewing gum at the same time apparently.

He said that Portland, Oregon had the same dilemma until their landfill operators went to a system of Czechs and balances (long horizontal rods with shiny, fluttery bits on the ends) as a way of keeping the gulls at bay.

Put seagull food on a boat at the other end of the marina.

Ted

Things like a suspended fake bird of prey, plastic snake, fine stretched humming wire, flapping attached thin pieces of cloth, may help, but even seagulls, with an IQ of -20, seem to figure it out. A large hungry onboard cat?
Seagulls seem to take a fancy to a particular boat for a time and then move on. I hope for your sake it is soon.

Fend off birds? why/

Harvest them as a resource , Flamingo and pelican is known locally as

Chockaloskie Chicken.

BruceK said:

Things like a suspended fake bird of prey, plastic snake, fine stretched humming wire, flapping attached thin pieces of cloth, may help, but even seagulls, with an IQ of -20, seem to figure it out. A large hungry onboard cat?
Seagulls seem to take a fancy to a particular boat for a time and then move on. I hope for your sake it is soon.

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Good luck with the rubber snakes. this guy is too smart for that!
Birds were eating the figs in my trees, I bought a plastic Owl sold to keep birds away. the bird would perch on his head. I brought it back to the store with the bird's droppings still on the Owl's head. They gave me my money back fast!
I find a few strands pf monofilament line streched above it the only thing that keeps them away from the fish cleaning station at my fishing camp.
They can't see the line when they bump into it it gives them a good scare.
Steve W

If you can convince a REAL snake to hang around it Will work, keep the mice and rats away too. This guy (non poisonous) lives in my workshop .
Steve W.

We have been using Bird Spiders on the bimini and trunk cabin tops and Bird Spikes on the radome top for the past two years. These have dramatically cut down (but not eliminated) the seagull infestation. We first tried the Gull Sweeps with little success.

Bird Spider 360° (4/pk) - Bird Spiders - Bird Deterrents - Products

I have a customer thats a panty hose leg and fills it up with dog hair from the local groomers shop....hangs it on mast.....said it works like a charm

I might try the monofiliment idea

I tried the bird spiders for a couple of years. Had the same issue with them as I did the Gull Sweeps (Not wings as I mentioned earlier). It was hard to get the proper coverage to do the job and the wind tended to tangle the Bird Spiders which made them even less effective. I might try the monofiliment idea with the bird spikes on the Radome. It will be cheap and not be an eyesore either. When trolling for Tuna the birds fly into the mono all the time. They usually look pretty suprized!

Cats work, or a couple of good bird dogs.

Duvie said:

I tried the bird spiders for a couple of years. Had the same issue with them as I did the Gull Sweeps (Not wings as I mentioned earlier). It was hard to get the proper coverage to do the job and the wind tended to tangle the Bird Spiders which made them even less effective. I might try the monofiliment idea with the bird spikes on the Radome. It will be cheap and not be an eyesore either. When trolling for Tuna the birds fly into the mono all the time. They usually look pretty suprized!

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Do the surrounding boats get hit as bad as your boat? Whats around you that attrract the birds? Why do you think they like your boat, better?

So are most of the dropping from flying over or actaully on the boat. Birds tend to follow a fight pattern. 90% of our hits are fly overs so all that fancy plastic stuff is a waste of time. Maybe move the morring or another morring?

Maybe a removable cover to protect the boat. In the winter I have 90% of the boat canvas/traped. The canvas is 80% plastic rather than solid so its easy to wash off. Also with the PNW rain most is wash off in a couple of days.

Get great big plastic owl... all the boats have them here in the uk.... seems to work!

Greetings,
Mr. venture. Owls may work for seagulls but crows love them.
Crow Busters - Beginners Techniques - Decoying and Calling Crows
Read third paragraph down. "The Fighting setup".
I think Mr. Steve has the BEST solution....Snakes!

Owl and a scarecrow!

Greetings,
Now THERE'S a thought!

A friend draped netting over his bimini to ward off the birds. It kind of worked...

Arriving at the marina a few days later, he happily observed that for once his boat's bimini was not host to a flock of seagulls, however there was something up there. As he got closer to the boat he realised that the reason why the flock was no longer calling his boat home was that one bird had gotten tangled in the net and died and it's corpse was what was now keeping the birds away!


We're getting new black covers and bimini in the next couple of weeks so I'll be watching this thread with great interest.

This time of year for me it is the weather ( see below ) but we use propane cannons to keep birds at bay during migration. Not sure if that would cause a huge disturbance for your neighbors but smaller cannons might do the trick.







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RT Firefly said:

Greetings,
Mr. venture. Owls may work for seagulls but crows love them.
Crow Busters - Beginners Techniques - Decoying and Calling Crows
Read third paragraph down. "The Fighting setup".
I think Mr. Steve has the BEST solution....Snakes!

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Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.
" We had seagulls, now we have 2 pythons, and they are in love. Uh-oh"

venture said:

Get great big plastic owl... all the boats have them here in the uk.... seems to work!

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Yeah same here. There's ones at over here at Bunnings that have a bobble/wobble head ( like those little dogs on peoples dashboards ) on it that looks the goods.

iPad Forum Runner

Plastic Owl did not work for us. Found a gull sitting right next to it.

dwhatty said:

Plastic Owl did not work for us. Found a gull sitting right next to it.

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Ok bit did it have a bobble head on it ??? Hahaha

iPad Forum Runner

Along about 3:00 pm in our marina the pelicans come me in to wait on the charter boats arrival. They feed on the scraps thrown overboard by the fish cleaning stations. The pelicans' favorite spots for waiting are the bow rails of near by boats. I got a gull sweep to keep them off Moonstruck's bow rail. It works. Probably 2 or 3 of these would cover the whole boat.

http://s1160.beta.photobucket.com/user/moonstruck3/media/245_zpsc6cc8212.mp4.html

While looking at a redtail hawk at the live wildlife museum Wednesday, the thought crossed my mind to have one stationed on my boat to scare/chase away birds. Then realized the hawk would poop too.