[TowerTalk] Birds on Antennas

Richard Zalewski dick.w7zr at gmail.com
Wed Jul 26 11:29:19 EDT 2006


Have you ever heard the term "Bird Brain"?  These critters do not have
the ability genetically to remember or pass on to their buddies that
the guy on the ground is trying to hurt them with BBs or peach pits.

I lived for a long time in XE on the beach.  Osprey and other large
birds would openly defy my attempts to rid them from my territory.  If
I was away for a week I could come home to find the start of a nest in
a tower section or on a side arm.  The only solution was to climb up
there and evict the would be squatters.

One time I used a .22 rifle to shoot a large creature perched on an
element.  It scared him temporarily so I thought I had the solution.
A year or so later in doing some antenna maintenance I found a nice
bullet hole in the element.  But the bird was gone temporarily.

I did the clicking of the rotator bit and that was effective.  I hired
a Mexican kid to be at the station and click the rotator once every
ten minutes but after a while I went broke and the kid left and the
birds came back.

I wanted to try one of those owls.  Driving down the beach one day I
saw one of those plastic creatures on someone's house and perched on
top of it was a large osprey.  Ditched that idea.

I did find a device that was made by Coleman that did work.  It was a
high frequency chirper.  Fully adjustable from Deer to Doormouse.  It
worked.  I don't use it here in Lake Havasu as nothing flys here in
the summer due to the heat.

Good luck and good hunting

On 7/25/06, kd4e <kd4e at verizon.net> wrote:
> > Rock salt crystals would only be a very short range propostion
> > anyway. They are irregular, not round. Hence, they would fly off in
> > an uncontrolled direction, once leaving the muzzle. Round shot has
> > some ballistic coefficient. Irregular crystals have zero or negative.
> >
> > Bad, bad idea.
> >
> > I have decent sucess just clanking the rotator selenoid. If that does
> > not work, an EMPTY BB gun fired in the direction of the offender,
> > seems to work also.
> >
> > INK N4OO
>
> Why not use the same sling shot one uses to hoist
> wire antennas over trees?
>
> I would use some large chunks of dog food, perhaps
> pre-frozen or something similar from a bird food
> supply.  Not only would it make the birds uncomfortable
> due to the flying objects whizzing by their beaks,
> they might choose to chase them to eat them.
>
> The frozen food is biodegradable so it doesn't harm
> your lawnmower and the bird lovers cannot complain --
> you are merely feeding the birds!  ;-)
>
> And yes, peach pits are also biodegradable, but I
> would guess that no-one would believe that you did
> not intend to harm the birds!
>
> These human-interactive methods are much less
> convenient than stringing fishline and the like.
>
> BTW:  Do they react to high levels of RF on the
> antenna?  Intermittent RF beacons are legal.
>
> --
>
> Thanks! & 73, doc kd4e
> http://bibleseven.com
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-- 
Tnx es 73
Dick W7ZR
www.w7zr.com


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