Bird Poop
      from the 
          				         Sailnet Tayana List

    Ok everyone, I need your help; this is a biggie. We have been crapped upon and crapped upon by blackbird flocks (starlings and grackles) since early November. They eat Palmetto tree fruits (we are the Palmetto State) and then roost in my rigging and poop out the worst stuff you have ever seen. Rather than working on something constructive on the boat, I'm spending all my time scrubbing bird feces off. SMILES is beginning to look like a national monument. I've tried everything. First (for $30.00) I bought and osprey kite and mounted it in my rigging...no luck, the blackbirds just laughed at it and it flew away in the first storm. Next I tried (for $1.49 apiece) beach balls... the boat began to look like a circus with beach balls tied everywhere in the rigging. But when the balls began to be covered with bird poop I realized they weren't the answer. So next I tried aluminum tinsel-like Christmas-tree decorations ($16.95 worth)... again, no success.  Then bright red polypropylene streamers....limited success - at least they don't poop on the streamers, they prefer the boat. Owls don't work, rubber snakes don't work, aluminum pie tins don't work. Can anyone help?

Jim Smiley	T37 	SMILES	Charleston, SC 					January 2002

Jim,
    My brother-in-law had a similar problem at his house. He got a tape of birds in distress and played it for a weekend. The blackbirds have not been back to his house on their migration for the last ten years. He is not the person to save things, so I'm sure he does not still have the tape. Seems he got it from a wildlife group. Sorry, not much help on where to get the tape.

Joe Sprouse	T-37 Sojourn									January 2002

Jim,
    Good thought. Try the Cornell Lab for Ornithology, in Ithaca. You may have to search the web for the address, and I can't remember the name of the Lab, though I have a vague recollection that it is called the Allen lab. If you have a copy of Audubon, they usually have an ad soliciting donations and listing courses for bird lovers. The director of the lab is Charlie Wolcott. He would find the problem amusing. Very bright man who did some of the seminal work on bird migration. He is a pilot who uses a small plane to track migration, and worries about birds interfering with flight. Some slight similarities to your problem.

    For another possible approach to the problem. It does no good to run a bare electrical wire on the spreaders, as they would normally only perch on a single wire. But if you run two small wires close to each other, and run a low AC voltage across them, if their toes touch across the two wires, they would get a slight shock. That would help deter them. Problem is that they have really thick calluses on their toes, and if they have various crud as well, it would act as an insulator. Talk with the people in your Psychology department. There may be a few old fashioned Operant Conditioners who work with pigeon, and they may be able to tell you about aversive stimuli using electrical grids. These don't harm the birds (heaven forbid, despite your spending days cleaning up their crap), and would not be likely to bring down the wrath of some local Animal Rights Group.

Harvey J. Karten										January 2002
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    Shotgun and five boxes of #9 ball ammo.

    Great news !!!!! all the nylon microfiliment that I tied 1" above my spreaders (tied from stay to mast and is 1" above the spreader - like a trip wire) actually worked and now the starlings have moved to SC.  Some of my dockmates also used Vaseline on the upper stays but where it cannot touch the sails.  Don’t fix the problem.... or maybe they'll return to the Chesapeake. 

    Now if I could only get the great blue herons from using my Windex as a merry-go-round. 

Rich Hampel											January 2002
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    We had a Hinckley 50 on our dock that had one of the so-called distress tapes.... played on a loud hailer mounted on his mizzen mast and timed to go off every 5 minutes for 24hrs a day. Yes definitely the starlings left in fear, but every other species of flying creature actually came and tried to help the bird in distress that was calling from inside that thing on the mast. .... Ducks, terns, gulls, herons, chickadees, sparrows, cormorants, swallows ...... all over the boat - pooping spontaneously all over the place to lighten their bodyweight just in case the cause of all that distress appeared.  Not a starling was to be seen !!!!! The Hinckley finally left for berthing at another marina... because of bird poop, the dents in his mast from missiles thrown while still full of beer, the globs of duct tape wadded and covertly applied to the loud hailer, etc.

Rich Hampel											January 2002
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