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I know nothing about carved owls functioning like a scarecrow but I do know the concrete pelican on the corner post of the fence in my back yard does nothing to scare off the doves.:)

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I don't think Pelicans prey on doves so that might be the reason.

In Florida we have a saying you can tell the tourist from the native Floridian by how they feed the Pelicans and Seagulls. Tourist throw the food straight up and have crap all over them. Seasoned natives of Florida always throws the food away from them and rarely sport a streak of bird poop.

What most people don't know is if the Pelican and gulls don't think you are feeding them fast enough they will attack. For that reason your concrete Pelican will probably keep empty handed Floridians out of you back yard.

Ed in Tampa wrote:I don't think Pelicans prey on doves so that might be the reason.

In Florida we have a saying you can tell the tourist from the native Floridian by how they feed the Pelicans and Seagulls. Tourist throw the food straight up and have crap all over them. Seasoned natives of Florida always throws the food away from them and rarely sport a streak of bird poop.

What most people don't know is if the Pelican and gulls don't think you are feeding them fast enough they will attack. For that reason your concrete Pelican will probably keep empty handed Floridians out of you back yard.

Nope. At least that has not been the case to date. The Floridians that come to visit, to the best of my knowledge, have never attempted to feed the birds, especially the pelican.

dusty wrote:I know nothing about carved owls functioning like a scarecrow but I do know the concrete pelican on the corner post of the fence in my back yard does nothing to scare off the doves.:)

Picture to follow.

They use fake owls on covered boat docks here to keep birds from nesting.

Why would you want to scare off doves? They are tasty.

frank81 wrote:They use fake owls on covered boat docks here to keep birds from nesting.

Why would you want to scare off doves? They are tasty.

If you are ever closeby, please stop and collect all of the doves you can. They are nothing other than filthy. Thank goodness they are seasonal.

dusty wrote:If you are ever closeby, please stop and collect all of the doves you can. They are nothing other than filthy. Thank goodness they are seasonal.

They are pigeons afterall. I take it you are not a fan of eating squab?

frank81 wrote:They are pigeons afterall. I take it you are not a fan of eating squab?

You have honed right in on my eating habits. Beef and mashed potatoes please.

Ed in Tampa wrote:I'm with you on the squirrels - mangey critters they are, furry tailed rats, that will eat almost anything and gnaw their way through everything to get to something to eat. Only good squirrel is one shot in a hickory nut grove, floured and fried then finished cooked in a good rich gravy.

Ed, you gotta the best fried-squirrel salesman that I have ever encountered. Or else my Tennessee hillbilly roots made me particularly vulnerable. Either way, you made me hungry.

But I simply don't understand all this talk about carving owls and pelicans and such to scare off the birds. Just get yourself a real live carnivorous bird for that job. My wife photographed this young red-shouldered hawk perched right on top of our old bird/squirrel feeder just this very morning. Really. Mom and Dad are much bigger and scarier, and they have a nest in a tall tree next to our driveway. They try to intimidate me with raucous hawk squawks when I work outside, but since I be even bigger than they are, I ignore them. Memo to Dad: tell Junior to be a little more subtle when staking out the birdfeeder! None of them yummy songbirds to be seen anywhere.

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Feeding the squirrels from the old hawk-perch birdfeeder did get too expensive after a while, so now we have one of those battery-powered squirrel-slinger bird feeders. Totally hilarious, when you get to see an unsuspecting squirrel making like a fluffy-tailed weed eater on steroids.

But then this winter, the fluffy-tailed varmits got to stealing all of our bird suet. My sweet and usually peaceable wife was all but begging for a pellet gun, but I figured she might make the critters suffer, instead of killing them clean. So I got her the cool suet cage for Christmas instead. Now that is just almost as funny as the squirrel-slinger, watching the suet-fattened squirrels try to penetrate that cage! Took them a good couple of weeks to give up.

And finally, have you ever seen such a wistful look on a wild turkey's face? I reckon they don't get suet too often.

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Our problem was starlings... First 50 to 100 of them would swoop in and the suet block would just vanish... We got one of the double cage type suet block feeders as shown in the post above. That saved the suet blocks.
They would still clean out the feeder in minutes. I was watching them one morning and it hit me. I got an old wire dog crate out of one barn and sat it on the round table (expanded metal top) where we set the feeder, opened the door and sat the feeder inside. It worked instantly... 98% of the regular birds fit between the bars fine but the starlings just can't quite make it. Cut our birdseed bill waaaay down.
To fill the feeder we just open the door and pour a scoop in.


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Ed in Tampa wrote:I'm with you on the squirrels - mangey critters they are, furry tailed rats, that will eat almost anything and gnaw their way through everything to get to something to eat. Only good squirrel is one shot in a hickory nut grove, floured and fried then finished cooked in a good rich gravy.

I was unaware of the squirrels' voracious appetites until last year when we were camping. They got in under the hood of the car overnight and ate some wiring insulation. That was an extra $800 expense we hadn't planned on after the tow.