Blackbirds/Grackles

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M

mrcoolbluepool

0
May 20, 2012
4
New Jersey
How the heck do you stop these birds from dropping there hatchlings feces in your pool.
For those who don't know, they make sacks of there young ones Crud and drop them in water to protect the smell from would be predators. I bought scare ballons and they laughed at them!! I tried owl decoys yea right!! I tried mylar streamers. Now I am on a mission anyone know what works? I feel like Bill Murray in the movie Caddyshack. Oh and my daughters want me to play nice :lol:
 
Man, I have this problem every spring. I run the polaris a little extra. Also set up old cd's on strings around the pool. A couple of them I attached to a small folding table, which i move around the pool every few days. The thought is that the light reflecting off the cd's will scare them off. I want to believe it works but I may be delusional.
 
My same problem every year. They make a total mess of my pool, the ledges & the surrounding deck. They will even carry & drop dead babies to get them out of the nest. My bb gun works pretty well, although I am a bad shot & miss all the time. When I am out there now, just the shake of the bb's in the gun scares them away, to only come back when I leave. They are very pesky, bold & persistent. They squawk like mad at me when I'm out there. It only gets better after they are done nesting. Year after year, the same for me.
 
I don't have fly-by poopers, but I do have pigeons that think just one end of my pool is the perfect place to drink from said pool, and defecate.

I bought rubber toy snakes, and placed them in conspicuous (read: looks like they're sunning) areas around that end of the pool...

no new poop!

But, if you've got bombadiers and not landers, I doubt it will help as much.
 
Oh my gosh, I thought I was losing my mind! We've had a backyard above ground pool for a few years now, but this is the first year that I find new poo deposits every stinking time I go to clean and do chemicals. I'm freaking out, worked really hard and got my pool chemically on the ball this year and now we don't want to get it, because um, there's bird ---- on the floor, deck, sometimes even in the skimmer. I clean, I shock and the next morning it's back. Disgusting. I will try all the ideas I see here and report back. There's one evergreen about 50 feet away in a neighbor's yard, and I was hoping that having a birdbath and a pond out there would help, but no. So the consensus is it may be a specific breed of bird? I'm an animal lover but these disgusting squatters are ticking me off.
 
We had the same thing daily, up until a few weeks ago. It was driving me INSANE!! One of two things happened, we bought a floating realistic looking alligator and anchored him to the middle of our round pool via fishing line so he couldn't float to the skimmer, and let him go. He floated around and immediately we notice a HUGE difference. I'd like to think he helped but won't know for sure until next spring because....I believe the baby season has ended for us so for weeks now we haven't had one dropping.
FYI, We bought our pool alligator at walmart in the pool section for like 10 bucks.
Good luck cuz it will make you CRAZY!!
 
I can't wait for my husband to read this thread. We have been in our house 3 years now and we had 15 ft. Arborvitae Hedge around our whole backyard. THe first swimming season my husband watched one of those birds fly over our pool and drop the poop sac into our pool. From then it has been the battle of the birds with him. We tried the snakes, the owl, cd's, a flying hawk on a 12 ft pole. Nothing really seemed to phase them. He put the owl on one of our swimming poles and would run around the yard with it trying to act like it was flying...hahahah...needless to say that didn't work either, but was a hoot to watch. He would go around the bushes and shake them. I think he even dumped one of the nests and thats when the "fun" began. He demonstrated what happened to him earlier that day as he was going around the bushes and shaking them to get the birds out. As I watched from inside the house, each time he shook the bush, more birds would show up and sit on the power lines around our backyard. It was like out of a movie. Last fall we decided to take 2 sides of the Arborvitae's out because they were getting too out of control from the previous owners never trimming them and alot of dead spots. Since we no longer have them, we haven't had them nesting by our yard and dropping the poop.
 
I had the same problem last year and this year. Thank God it's over. It seems like this year didn't last quite as long. Poop all on the sides of the pool and bombs inside it. Googling last year I found out about the mother bird nest cleaning thing.

The weird part was that for me it's not early spring when the rest of the baby birds are out and about but late spring. It was almost june before it stopped. I hope they're done for the year!

Now I just have to keep dealing with the orange pollen from the stupid tree in my neighbor's yard. My pool looks like someone crushed up a box of cheetos or cheeze-its and broadcast it over the surface.
 

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I had the grackle problem last year . I tried all kinds of things . The fishing string going across the pool worked for about a day until they figured that out . This year I set my home made fountain out of the return line to shoot across the pool. Ran it for about 8 to 8 the water and noise kept them away. The extra cost of running the pump 12 hrs aday is small price I'll be glad to pay that keeps them away.
 
Just wanted to post an update. I had been scooping about a dozen "bombs" out of the pool twice a day for several days. I found my son's old deflated and patched 6 ft. long inflatable alligator in a cabinet in the garage. Duct taped the holes, blew him up and put him in the pool yesterday...aside from a few leaves the pool is clean this afternoon! I am overjoyed and Gator is back to stay. Cheap fix, folks :) Funny how some things work for some and not others.
 
We've got about 2 dozen grackles that nest in a line of arborvitaes next to the house. Last year we started having problems with the fecal sacs that they'd drop in the pool and we put up one of tese http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0019FAMT4/ref=oh_details_o04_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1. Worked great.

This year they came back and the owl didn't work. I jammed 3 - 10' long x 1" wide pieces of aluminum conduit around the pool then strung fishing line between the poles and from side to side (toss the spool of line up and over the line attached to the poles) and attached the line to the top rails. A total of 8 pieces of fishing line over the pool.

Immediately we saw that the birds were swerving to avoid the pool.

From what I've read the birds' vision shows things 10x larger, they see the line and don't want to get tangled up in it.

Whatever the reason I'll be stringing fishing line over the pool every year from now on.
 
Is there a specific height to put these lines. My husband just place them by putting 4 poles in each corner and stringing fishing line about 1 foot apart all across. The birds fly under to drop the sac. Too low and it will be in our way. Should we string line around the sides too? Help.
 
I bought 2 TWO floating Alligators....pressured washed my concrete around my I ground pool.....by that evening..you couldn't tell that I had spent all day pressure washing it. ? I don't know what to do!!
Kare said:
Just wanted to post an update. I had been scooping about a dozen "bombs" out of the pool twice a day for several days. I found my son's old deflated and patched 6 ft. long inflatable alligator in a cabinet in the garage. Duct taped the holes, blew him up and put him in the pool yesterday...aside from a few leaves the pool is clean this afternoon! I am overjoyed and Gator is back to stay. Cheap fix, folks :) Funny how some things work for some and not others.
Click to expand...
 
Now I have this too....

dadf04e3cc758b18ab2349071b4bd26a.jpg




Welcome to my wildlife refuge. Glad someone's enjoying the pool....

Sent from my pretty nifty brand new LG V10
 

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