Do owls work?

PaulJ

PaulJ

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My formerly nice clean boat has been out on it's swinging mooring on the Orwell for a month now and it is no longer nice and clean...... it has nasty white spots all over it. Action is needed but what works best? Do plastic owls work or are they a waste of money? What measures have the panel found effective?

Paul
 
I've never been able to understand why people expect a plastic owl to deter seagulls.

Do seagulls, which are active in daytime, ever come into contact with real owls, which are nocturnal? Assuming they don't, why should they have any fear of them?

:D
 
Birds generally, and gulls in particular, are very clever. It does not take them long to work out a real threat from an ruse.

Owls ar not a major predator of gulls, in fact gulls have few predators.

People around me have tried everything from nodding owls to noisy tape, rotating bird scarers to old cd's, nothing seems to work for long.

Oddly Rhoda Rose seems immune from most droppings and this I can only put down to the huge amount of standing rigging she has. It could be that local gulls prefer a clearer flight path when landing or taking off. Or perhaps they feel I have enough problems sailing a motor sailer :-)
 
Sat in Nieuport marina - one of them and it had tannoys broadcasting seagull sounds which I understood warned to keep away. There were certainly no seagulls around.
 
I was in Portland marina a few years ago, soon after it opened, and there were no seagulls around. The marina manager said this was due to the windmill generators over the office. After a few gulls had been killed by them, the rest stayed away. Maybe a windmill on your boat might help :D
 
Particularly bad in North Fambridge this year, but it's Blxxdy Pigeons here not seagulls and white spots is the last thing they are. I swear you could use this stuff as cement it's a nightmare to remove even with a power washer and leaves horrible yellow stains, that need Boaty equivalent of CIF to get off..... One much smaller thing, a pied wagtail I think, got inside my folded mainsail and stained the sail....

It'll be fishing line along the cross-trees next year I think
 
Boz said:
Particularly bad in North Fambridge this year,
Click to expand...

Not down here in the mud it ain't :D - not a single birdie do-do on the boat in weeks

Get out of that creek and come sit in the mud. You can't go anywhere very often but the boat stays lovely and clean!
 
The biggest problem we've had in the last few years has been in the yard over winter. The little birdies seem to love eating the berries out of the hedges, and then cr*pping on our decks, leaving purple stains. We also seem to be getting a lot of green over winter that has only happened the last couple of years. To add insult to injury, I had to get the Tacktick wind down before launch as the battery was fubar'd, and the little panel was covered in aforesaid purple bird poo (no doubt to detriment of battery)
 
Harry Potter seems to think owls work.

I understand if it wasn't for seagulls defecating on boats we would never have had brasso.

One antipodean with bronze winches found that where the seagulls left their message on his bronze it was nice and shiny. So he just mixed it with a little alcohol and there we have brasso.
What a pity we don't have bronze winches any more so that the seagulls could be as useful as owls.
 
Thanks for your responses folks....... I had to laugh at the curried seagull! I had a feeling that a plastic owl might not be very effective, which was why I asked the question. And then there would always be the problem of it taking up too much locker space on a boat with limited stowage space. For better or worse I have now ordered some of these off ebay.........

Bird scarer.JPG

Only time will tell if they are effective........

Paul
 
You might like to club together and hire a falconer to come in from time to time. I hear they are very effective and some councils use them for this purpose. You could use one of the fake falcons between visits and the birds would not get the oportunity to learn it was fake.
 
I have an owl that definitely keeps the Starlins away. It seems to have no affect on Sea gulls, I have had huge white dollops on the sail cover either side of where the owl sits. They obviously come and sit next to him. During late summer and autumn when the berries are ripe all the boats on our mooring suffer really badly with the Starlins gorging themselves and then resting or roosting on the boats. I do get some mess where they sit in the pushpit and pulpit, but the middle of the boat stays fairly clean
 
pmagowan said:
You might like to club together and hire a falconer to come in from time to time. I hear they are very effective and some councils use them for this purpose. You could use one of the fake falcons between visits and the birds would not get the oportunity to learn it was fake.
Click to expand...

If your seagulls are anything like ours I suspect the falcon might get a good kicking.:DOurs are not scared to take on medium sized dogs and elderly ladies if there is a meal involved.Some attitude.:encouragement:
 
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