Owl Decoys... do they work?

Hey all,

I'm looking for an alternative to bird netting to keep the birds (and other pest) out of my garden and berry bushes.

I have seen all kinds of owl decoys and supposedly if you move them from one post to another a couple times a week they work. Have any of you tried these? If so do they work to keep birds and rabbits away?

Ray

My opinion: If the animals were dumb enough to fall for it, it would probably also scare away the real owls.

I have never met anybody who claimed that it worked for them (or even helped).

I do know that rubber snakes in your trees keep woodpeckers away, not sure if they keep all birds though.

I work at an airport and that question is one of our 'test' questions in training. Correct answer: No.

If it is birds that you are trying to scare away then harrassment is the most effective. People are often surprised to find that harrassment is much more effective than killing. The reason is that by harrassing the birds we are training them - they won't want to make the nest here next year, or use this as a rest stop during migration next year, and the same for thier offspring and so on.

The next question I have is why do you want to keep them away? What in particular is the problem?

(edited for massive typos)

Sorry, I missed the whole berry bushes part. I get it now .

The answer to that problem is a lot more complex. I am currently re-reading (for the third time) the Bill Mollison pamphlets that can be found at the permaculture institute site.

Netting is the easy answer but canopies are the permanent answer and I am still learning the subject so am not good at explaining it.

I ACCIDENTALLY have the almost perfect canopy at my place - I was within days of having some trees removed when I stumbled upon the canopy teachings. The proper canopy is why birds have not taken all my fruit, berries etc. (yet).

I remember telling my wife when we were first dating to get a fake owl to scare the pigeons away, she pointed over to the next balcony where a fake owl was covered in pigeon shit. Bless your heart thought for hoping, I've been trying old cd's strung on a wire hung from trees, it doesn't do a dam thing but reflect lights onto the house all day and disco lights from the moon at night.

Thanks folks you saved me some money there I think.

Ray

On the other hand one of those idiotic motion activated dancing santaclauses might do the trick, scares me, dogs, babies, and most likely birds half to death

My parents had a problem with seaguls pooping all over their floating raft, well not so much the poop, but the fish bones that would be left and stepped on. My dad got a windsock/sail and hooked to a piece of conduit as a pole from the edge of the raft. The windsock looked like an eagle and worked really well, no seaguls the first year. In the spring of the 2nd year the string broke and the windsock was lost, the seaguls quickly reclaimed the spot. My dad went out and got another one, but this one was some crazy multi colored twisty thing, he replaced the string with some light chain and some fishing tackles and it's on about it's 4th year now. I would say it keeps the seagulls away 90% of the time or better. There seems to be one bird who isn't scared of the wind sock, but does seem to be scared of the BB gun for some reason. Not that my dad or I would ever shoot at a seagul, that's illegal here afterall, but shooting right next to it or as I like to say, "firing a warning shot off his bow" seems to work.

I think the fake owls work better if you have a lot of real owls around your place. Nesting boxes, tall pole perches, mowing your orchard, leaving a light on near your garden/orchard and playing owl calls over the stereo are good ways to attract screech owls and barred owls. (Horned owls, too.) When you get a bunch of real owls, the other birds can't always be so sure that the owl decoys are fake. (It helps to move the fake owls around a lot, too.) Owls are great allies and some can become quite tame. In Europe, some farmers have nesting platforms in their barns for barn owls.

Sometimes we'd go out and take turns; me and my siblings, and just watch the plants before we figured out there were other ways to keep animals and things out of our garden. It was only a couple days, but it was funny while it lasted.

CD's hanging in the garden do work however...
Good hung over row'd raised beds...
I've seen birds scatter upon seeing their reflection and the flashy rays that
refract off...

I did buy 2 owls that had a motion sensor that caused their heads to move. we also have real owls nesting close by. Within a week, I looked out to see birds sitting on the heads of the stupid owls, getting a good look at which berries to eat first. They did make decent target practice though~

Owl decoys didn't work for me but I kept them because they are cute.

I have found that keeping plants out in the middle of the property and limiting water resources helps to prevent birds and critters from venturing to the garden. Hawks like to hunt in open spaces along a forest edge.

Critters just get used to these things and desensitize when they pose no actual harm. When I was a teen I did pest control . We used two things for bird control. For pidgeons we put out corn laced with some agent that triggered a total fear frenzy in the bird. It ate and quickly flopped down wings flapping and distress cries. Other birds would swoop down to eat and see the fear filled bird and fly off. Within ten minutes the fearfilled bird recovered and flew off. A few days of this and no more birds on your building. The other item was a caulking we would put on fences around tennis courts etc, It triggered some fear response through phermones. It gave off the scent for months. The birds would swoop down and before they landed would be veering off screeching . Behavioral conditioning and totally not permaculture . It worked really good though. I only mention it because they involved a powerful negative reinforcement that decoys , pie tins , and coyote urine do not have. A prolonged and consistent noxious effect is required.

Hi Ray,

Yes, as a former Nuisance Wildlife Control agent, and state supervisor in Pest Control...I can professionally state they work on a clear "ethological" deterrent level.

However...

You will work harder "manually animating them" to maintain an active "flight distance" from noxious species that the effort will soon exhaust you. Not until we get "self actualising" puppets (robots) of different predatory species will we get consistent results with this modality of the "scar crow" effect.

Physical extermination (where warranted) and barriers is the only effective method in general while working in concert with other deterrents like "bone sauce" and the related "folk remedies that have good effect when done well.

Hi Wayne,

I agree with your assessment in general. The first product you mentioned was removed from the market as I know it for cause irreversible damage in some songbirds...do you remember the product name? The other I am either unaware of or you may have confused with the "tanglefoot" products that worked well by triggering perching and roosting birds dislike for "sticky feet" no deterrent chemical-pheromone present in the product. This product only proved useful until it became inundated with dust or detritus rendering its "stickiness" obsolete. It has been replaced by the "spiked" products that I find both aesthetically unpleasing and/or only effective on birds like pigeons, and not the smaller species.

Regards,

j

I can only say...

Our rural mailbox has been in the same spot for the whole 30 or so years we've lived here. This past Spring, for whatever reason, the blackbirds took to sitting on it, and of course, shitting on it too. My wife said, well, let's get a plastic owl, and I more-or-less scoffed at her. Well, get an owl we did, and no more birds.... IDK.... That sucker is scary, scares ME sometimes, and it's right on top of the mailbox, but dang, no birds, and no poop!

I would just plant more. We share this world with our fellow creatures who are just trying to make a living too. We had better learn to get along because we are outnumbered. One for me and two for you, and one for me and two for you...

An active outdoor cat works good for berries in the yard. I have a cherry tree beside my deck. My cat used to sit on the porch rail when they were ripe. Never lost a noticeable amount until he got too old to hunt. Don't think he actually caught any.

I have one in the middle of garden and keeps the birds away besides pheasants

My fake/plastic owls are totally ineffective except for short-term use in a very close-proximity area (we do have owls that nest behind our house):

I had a female cardinal who persisted on trying to build a nest on 2nd story steep-sloped bay window roof that was sheltered under our eaves; all her materials consistently just slid off.

After literally 2 weeks of cleaning the nest trash off the deck every day, I hung the owl from the gutter about 6' away - no effect.

I then hung the owl right at the target nesting area. The cardinal would perch about 4 feet away, but become visibly agitated.

She did give up (immediately zero nest trash), and did not return the next year.

Since then I have used the owl effectively two more times for other "target" areas.

BUT, I sat an owl on our deck rail and the squirrels never even seem to notice it one time, just squeezed around it while running the rail.

I used to live in Osaka. As densely populated as it is, you will find Gardens in the tiniest little squares imaginable, some of them with vegetables as high as your head. Old people can be very serious about these little gardens, and you can see them as you go by hours and hours everyday. In many of these Gardens, The Gardener's have built fake birds of prey, or flying organisms, out of thin bamboo and black trash bags. The plastic is strung Slack enough to billow with the slightest wind, and the creature dangles from a length of string. I honestly couldn't tell you how the birds felt about them, but I do know those gardeners produce a hell of a lot of fruit and vegetables that are eaten all throughout Japan. Japan is old. They pride themselves on this. If any flashy innovation stuck its head into their culture, it's had about two thousand years to flush out anything that doesn't bring home the bacon. So logic would suggest to me it must work, in the same way that all molars, regardless of the animal in whom they developed, look pretty much the same. In the way that hammers, regardless of the people or the country or the resources in question, developed pretty much the same.