Birds on the boom=Bird Turds!

Birds on the boom=Bird Turds! 

Birds just love to land on my sailboat boom and many leave droppings on the boat. That puts an incentive on keeping the sail cover on the sail, the cover is easier to rinse off than the sail, but it is still messy. Putting Lazy Jacks on the boat has helped a little, but it has not solved the problem.

I thought of putting a scare crow on the boat, but I figure the birds would just sit on that too. They sell fake Owls that you can set on the boat…most other birds do not like Owls and Hawks. There is a neat articulated Hawk you can get that you hang and the wings flap in a breeze. These are nice but they are not cheap.

One suggestion was to string a line just above the boom and put old CD’s or foil on the line so the birds can see the line and the line will not let them land. With my luck a crow would take the CD’s and foil.

My sister was a big time cat lover…she had hundreds of cat figurines and cat silhouettes. Of course I got rid of most of them, but in hind sight I should have kept a few for the boat. 8-) I put a wood cut out of a cat on the boom that I had made (I used our cat Betty White as a model). Time will tell if it helps.

I have seen Big Eyes put on things and that is also supposed to be a scairer of birds but I think they look creepy. That said…I think it works. *-)

I sure am glad we have running water at the dock that I can rinse things down with. Things could be much much worse!  8-)