Bird question

[Jim_b]

This a little out of our area, DesertUSA got the following e-mail asking for help, any ideas?

I need some serious help!

I live in the Caribbean surrounded by small farms and homes in the country. There are many tall palms and other trees about and they are used for nesting by some Chicken Hawks. The closest trees would be more than 75 feet from our home. I also have a typical West Indian Patio around the front and partially to the sides of my home and we enjoy sitting out there. That is until a Chicken Hawk started targeting us. It has three babies that we have enjoyed watching as they learn to fly in the valley below us. But this mother must think we are a threat and I have two small open sore spots on my head to prove it. She has bounced off the top of my head while I am out in the garden and this morning it dive-bombed my husband while sitting in his rocking chair close to the wall and glass sliding doors of our home.

My question is .... is there anything we can do to stop this bird from flying from one length of the patio to the other...and frequently returning to do it from the other direction. This patio is not ground level but rather up about 18 feet from the ground below. Do you have any suggestions? We do not want to harm this beautiful animal but it is beginning to get serious and we are afraid that it or we will get hurt.

Thank you. Nancy, US ex-pat living on the main island of St Vincent and the Grenadines, West Indies

[reptilist]

Sounds like it is protecting it's brood. It can't help doing what it does, you on the other hand, have a choice. Stay indoors.

[reptilist]

I'm wondering if she could place a decoy in a strategic location.... Such a a plastic owl or a snake.

[coazon de oro]

When people are getting injured, or at risk of losing an eye to a wild animal, it's a very serious matter. I would pull out the big guns.

A high caliber water gun would require a true marksman, so instead, a water hose with a squeeze type sprayer set on stream would probably work.

A gun with blanks, or any firearm fired indirectly when the bird gets close would probably work also.

A sprinkle of salt would really do the trick. Just load two shot shells with regular table salt, and give it the Emeril Lagasse treatment. When the hawk comes at you, Bam! season one side, as it turns away, Bam! season the other side.

Hopefully the water will do the trick.

Homar

[reptilist]

Water might be OK, but I'd expect a visit from LE over discharging a firearm in a residential area. Not to mention the protected status for Birds of Prey.

[Jim_b]

Reply from Nancy

Thanks everyone for your feedback...you are all quite the characters J I think I have a solution which would work for ANY marauding birds. I remembered as a child my father would always hang in the garden those light shiny aluminum stove plates you put around burners on strings attached to sticks about 5 feet tall.

We lived on Long Island which is known for growing corn and we always had a good sized patch in our back yard. But we had crows too. The first year that the crows pecked most of the cobs sent my Dad to the store to purchase some of these covers. From the first sign of the corn seeds shooting up, out came the aluminum covers all shined up every year and we never had a bird problem again. I believe the shiny reflection is what keeps them away. I have expanded on that by taking two old CDs...gluing them together shiny side out and hanging them on fish line...I have about 14 of these hanging around my patio.

I have also cut up some mylar food storage bags and made some bright silvery streamers that I have attached to a baseball hat for me....and nailed onto sticks placed throughout the yard and in my veggie garden. The hawk and her babies do not land on my fence or ground now and I believe they will not any longer as long as I keep these shiny things up. I appreciate your comments but our hawks and screech owls are protected so I cannot....nor would not harm them.

Thanks again for your efforts. Nancy in St. Vincent

[reptilist]

Good deal!
btw, we wear hard hats at work, you might want to buy a couple of them to wear on the veranda!

[Apache Devil]

Tack up a large tarp between two poles so that when you are in the patio, the hawk is not seeing you. It need only be temporary until it's fledglings have flown the coop.