We keep our boat on a mooring in the Upper Chesapeake. The osprey and bald eagle populations here are quite healthy, to say nothing of the cormorants, mallards, and herons.
Two weeks ago I came out to my boat with some bags of ice after dark and thought the crunching under my feet was from dropped ice cubes. When I turned the cabin lights on, I realized I'd trampled through a dozen duck eggs that had been laid on the side deck.
Last week, I came out to the boat (again after dark) and narrowly avoided stepping on half of a rabbit (or possibly opossum-it was hard to tell) that had been left on a cockpit seat.
This past Friday, my wife scared off an osprey when she arrived at the boat. Sadly the osprey left behind the massive disemboweled carp on which it had been feasting.
I don't want piles of poo and guts to be the first thing we think of when we think of our boat, but lately those have been the first things we've seen when going out to the boat.
Reflective whirligigs seem effective at keeping seagulls and smaller birds away but seem to have no effect on the ducks or predatory birds. A neighbor in the mooring field has a massive net that drapes his entire boat but that takes him nearly an hour to install and then an hour to remove and that gets blown partly open half of the time anyway. I figure there must be a better solution and figured this was the best place to ask about it.
So, how do you keep these flying pigs off of your boat? Or do you just accept it as part of boating and keep a shovel and bucket at the ready for cleaning up after them?
Two weeks ago I came out to my boat with some bags of ice after dark and thought the crunching under my feet was from dropped ice cubes. When I turned the cabin lights on, I realized I'd trampled through a dozen duck eggs that had been laid on the side deck.
Last week, I came out to the boat (again after dark) and narrowly avoided stepping on half of a rabbit (or possibly opossum-it was hard to tell) that had been left on a cockpit seat.
This past Friday, my wife scared off an osprey when she arrived at the boat. Sadly the osprey left behind the massive disemboweled carp on which it had been feasting.
I don't want piles of poo and guts to be the first thing we think of when we think of our boat, but lately those have been the first things we've seen when going out to the boat.
Reflective whirligigs seem effective at keeping seagulls and smaller birds away but seem to have no effect on the ducks or predatory birds. A neighbor in the mooring field has a massive net that drapes his entire boat but that takes him nearly an hour to install and then an hour to remove and that gets blown partly open half of the time anyway. I figure there must be a better solution and figured this was the best place to ask about it.
So, how do you keep these flying pigs off of your boat? Or do you just accept it as part of boating and keep a shovel and bucket at the ready for cleaning up after them?
