Sea Gulls

Damage:

Hi...I live in a house with a flat roof and right at the shore. Seagulls like to fly over, drop clams and crabs on my roof to crack them open and then drop down to feast. Can you give me ANY ideas on how to repel these birds from doing this? This person tried plastic "owls" which didn't do much. I am considering a device called (cute name) "Terror Eyes", which is actually a sort of large basketball with big owl-eyes painted on it. I am looking at various "sonic" and "ultrasonic" devices as well, but I have doubts about the effectiveness of such a method. It is becoming almost impossible to sleep in the morning with the loud "BANG" as a big clam hits the roof above my head, to be followed by banging as the gull repeatedly "bangs" the critter against the roof to open it further.

One Solution:

Here on the West Coast I would get some used Monofilament fishnet from a gillnet fisherman and stretch it across the parapets (or rig supports to hold it up from the surface about 12") to form a barrier to stop the gulls from landing to eat their food if they did drop it. It does not take long for them to realize that their program is finished. The mono gillnet is very light and almost invisible to the eye from a distance.But the birds see it quite easily and avoid it. Hope this helps you. Ken / Otterbuster

Another Solution:

Seagulls can also be controlled with the use of this “Daddy Long Legs” device. It mounts easily to a roof, dock post or any other areas where gulls are landing. To order online, clickONLINE

Yet Another Solution:

A few years back we ran into this same kind of a problem on some buildings owned by Boeing Company. What we did is set up a grid pattern on top of the roofs using 1/4" cables. The cables were attached to a post about six feet high off the roof. The cables were set in a square grid pattern about six feet apart. The sea gulls would not drop down inbetween the cables, driving them off the building tops. If this guy is using the roof top for anything than he could set some tall corner post up and use heavy cable on the outside frame and than use smaller cable on the inside grid pattern. Outside cable say (depending on side of roof) 3/8" and grid cable say 1/4" cable. In between cables make it somewhere between four to six foot grid pattern.
John R. Consolini
NW Nuisance Wildlife Control
Redmond, WA
Region #1 Director NWCOA
free-lance writer for WCT

Another Solution:

Hi Stephen,

This is a pretty common problem in Florida (been there 9 years)...

An effective method used on the west coast especially is thin steel cable or wire that you use above the area and you use them crossed over each other ..... 7 or 8 ft. above the area you want to protect.

I like the fishnet approach actually... good stuff Ken... but the cable approach might be cheaper... (???) ....
and is very discrete.

Francois

Another Solution:

Steve solved this problem several times with 4 "gull netting strung on stainless steel grid wire.

Bob Pritchard ACE WILDLIFE

 

8/8/101/02