[TowerTalk] Canada geese

Bill bmarx at bellsouth.net
Sat Feb 17 19:49:38 EST 2018


Try the plastic snakes on your boom too, to scare birds. It works...

Ill take temporary relief over nothing at all.
Bill


On 2/17/2018 1:21 PM, Patrick Greenlee wrote:
>
> Bill, The boating community often recommends plastic snakes to keep 
> birds from roosting and pooping all over your boat.  With over 30 
> years of boating experience in the San Diego California region I 
> witnessed lots of folks using plastic snakes.  You can tell the new 
> guys at the yacht club by their  new plastic snakes.  Over time the 
> birds get used to the snakes and totally ignore them.
>
>  I know of no long term success with plastic snakes.  Experienced 
> boaters I have known agreed that collectively we had never seen a long 
> term success using plastic snakes.   Phony owls are also touted but 
> they too lose effectiveness fairly rapidly.  I've seen birds perched 
> on the owls head pooping on it.
>
> Geese and other birds have hearing that extends higher in freq than 
> normal humans.  I say normal because in my mid 20's my left ear went 
> to 21,500 Hz and my right ear went to about 20,500 Hz.  I could hear 
> bats feeding, ultrasonic alarms, etc. Now I wear $6000 hearing aids 
> from the VA thanks to small arms fire and other loud noises.
>
> Something that works and doesn't lose efficacy from birds getting used 
> to it is ultrasonics used intermittently more or less randomly unless 
> used with IR motion detector or other detection apparatus.  I have 
> used ultrasonics very successfully to keep away various pests 
> including birds.  Places with large flocks of geese have nice lawns 
> "goose greased" so badly you can't walk through without getting your 
> shoes messed up. I have recommended ultrasonics to lakefront home 
> owners who had great success with repelling their Canada geese.  The 
> geese soon learned to avoid that lawn and stay on his neighbors lawns 
> farther from the transducers.  Word spread and some of his neighbors 
> went ultrasound also with great success.  Only a few houses stayed 
> unprotected, a couple were only used a week or two a year, did not add 
> ultrasound (that I am aware of) but were partially protected by 
> neighbors with ultrasound.
>
> Geese have pretty good ultrasonic hearing.  To them bursts of high 
> levels of ultrasound is what having a steam whistle go off in our ear 
> is like. Some ultrasound pest repellent gear has selectable freq bands 
> so you can avoid bugging cats and dogs or include cats and dogs and 
> they will avoid the area too.
>
> Decades back the lab where I worked had an oceanographic tower 
> anchored to the bottom of the ocean just off the coast from San 
> Diego.  Seagulls used it for a big bird perch and pooped all over 
> everything on it.  Seagulls were captured and "lightly tortured" 
> within limits of animal cruelty organizations and their distress cries 
> were recorded.  These were played back at random intervals and worked 
> pretty good but over time lost effectiveness.  You don't get used to 
> pain from powerful ultrasound, it always hurts if you can hear it.
>
> Patrick        NJ5G
>
> On 2/16/2018 5:03 PM, Bill wrote:
>> Try some plastic snakes....
>> Bill W2CQ
>>
>>
>>
>> On 2/15/2018 9:42 PM, Patrick Greenlee wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> Since this not
>>>>> where squirrels are out, and the ground hogs appear to still be 
>>>>> hibernating I think the
>>>>> culprit is a goose.  The coax looks more like it is pulled apart 
>>>>> than cut.
>>>>>
>>>>> Has anyone had a similar occurrence?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>> Around here (south central Oklahoma) the gophers are bad about 
>>> chewing up direct burial cables. Need to use conduit.  They don't 
>>> seem to chew up PVC pipe/conduit. A notable exception is the direct 
>>> bury phone lines with which I have never had a problem.
>>>
>>> Many folks don't appreciate the gooses bite.  They can bite quite 
>>> hard and have a raspy insides to their mouths.  They bite down hard 
>>> and then twist their heads.  Pretty vicious.
>>>
>>> Patrick
>>> _______________________________________________
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> TowerTalk mailing list
>>> TowerTalk at contesting.com
>>> http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/towertalk
>>
>



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