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FOWL smelling bamboo

Posted: Fri Jan 29, 2016 1:56 am
by tallgrass
An unforseen problems with Robins. It started about 4 years ago during winter months when all the desiduous trees had no leaves. Hundreds of robins started roosting in our bamboo groves. At first it was kind of cool to see them come in, and hear them chatter all evening. 4 year later it's not so cool. There are now THOUSANDS, yes THOUSANDS and the poop smell is horrible, (worse than the restroom at taco bell) and no the fertilizer is not worth it. If I can't find a solution, it's going to be a major bamboo erdication. That will be a really big bummer as I have some groves that are looking great, lots of time grooming and cleaning them . If anybody has some ideas I sure would appreciate . The poo pics are from 2 years ago.

Re: FOWL smelling bamboo

Posted: Fri Jan 29, 2016 2:07 am
by needmore
Had them in a yellow groove grove but the smell was never noticeable - they were there by the dozens. It seemed to me like they really hated me walking around them after dark so perhaps you have tried to annoy them away? Pressure washer pointed up at them after dark might be interesting.

Re: FOWL smelling bamboo

Posted: Fri Jan 29, 2016 3:34 am
by tallgrass
I'm out of firecrackers and I think I've annoyed the nieghbors more than the birds. As I chase them out of one grove they just go to another (birds, not the neighbors).. Did I mention THOUSANDS, MANY THOUSANDS!. Tomorrow night I'll try the pressure wsher.

Re: FOWL smelling bamboo

Posted: Fri Jan 29, 2016 7:06 am
by Baba Booey
You could hire a falconer / someone who does falconry. Or, a drone... To scare them away.

Re: FOWL smelling bamboo

Posted: Fri Jan 29, 2016 8:50 am
by Tarzanus
tallgrass wrote:I'm out of firecrackers and I think I've annoyed the nieghbors more than the birds. As I chase them out of one grove they just go to another (birds, not the neighbors).. Did I mention THOUSANDS, MANY THOUSANDS!. Tomorrow night I'll try the pressure wsher.
Image

Re: FOWL smelling bamboo

Posted: Fri Jan 29, 2016 12:55 pm
by Cooper12
Tarzanus wrote:
tallgrass wrote:I'm out of firecrackers and I think I've annoyed the nieghbors more than the birds. As I chase them out of one grove they just go to another (birds, not the neighbors).. Did I mention THOUSANDS, MANY THOUSANDS!. Tomorrow night I'll try the pressure wsher.
Image

Haha I used to live about 20 minutes from Bodega where they filmed this

Re: FOWL smelling bamboo

Posted: Fri Jan 29, 2016 1:01 pm
by Cooper12
On your smaller plants you can use heavy duty poultry netting but its pricy so it would be tough to do a bunch of them.
There is another product vineyards use called Bird Guard which covers a large area. its a electronic noise emitter .
They do not like reflective tape either. so that may help. I use that on my chicken runs that i do not have covered with the netting. it helps keep hawks away for me but
its shiny and reflective and may help keep them out. this is what vineyards often tie up when the grapes are near ripening

Re: FOWL smelling bamboo

Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2016 1:18 pm
by Alan_L
tallgrass wrote:.. Hundreds of robins started roosting in our bamboo groves... There are now THOUSANDS...
I have never seen more than maybe 20 robins at a time, but I know how noisy robins are in the pre-dawn hours. Must be crazy. Sorry I don't have any suggestions to add.

Re: FOWL smelling bamboo

Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2016 8:06 pm
by foxd
The only times I have seen the bird populations in bamboo get excessive is when the weather has been extreme enough during the Winter that all other habitat has been destroyed.

Thinking about it, the easiest way I've found to disturb the roosting of birds in bamboo during the night is just to pass the beam of light from a flashlight across the grove. I could see using a rotating light on a timer to drive the birds away.

Re: FOWL smelling bamboo

Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2016 8:42 pm
by needmore
I had the huge flocks of robins a few winters in a row, I think they really like the bamboo cover and just hang out for weeks.

Re: FOWL smelling bamboo

Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2016 9:56 pm
by Tarzanus
Birds were quite shy to enter my bamboos at first. I only noticed a bunch of blackbirds scratching mulch from around my bamboos, they especially love F. Rufa and it's thick layer of leaf litter. They expose rhizome buds each winter. Well, this year, I've noticed they also started using bamboo canopy to hide in dense mass of leaves. They don't even go away when I pass the bamboo, they just move aggressively which makes the bamboo move as well. Thinking of it, bamboo is a perfect hideout for them, cats can't really climb it as they do trees and winter doesn't remove leaf cover. Really strange that they needed so much time to adapt to bamboo. A couple of weeks ago, I've seen birds fighting inside Rufa bush. The whole darn bamboo was moving. I loved it! :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

I did notice first signs of (not so) massive guano deposition on some of bamboos. It seems they especially like to crap on Pseudosasa japonica's big leaves, even if they never really use it for hideout. Doesn't stink at all, though. I'll clean the whole thing with water hose if it gets nasty, but I have a feeling rain will do that for me. Besides, I expect most of them to move in the spring to other trees.

Re: FOWL smelling bamboo

Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2016 11:25 pm
by wind-borne
I used to enjoy the stereophonic chatter of hundreds of myna birds in big Bambusa clumps in my yard in the tropics. 5 clumps in front, 3 in back that I had planted about 25 years earlier. They stayed for about 2 years. Stuff decomposes so quickly there that i never noticed an odor, but missed them when they left.

Re: FOWL smelling bamboo

Posted: Thu Mar 03, 2016 11:03 pm
by tallgrass
More bird poo pics

Re: FOWL smelling bamboo

Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2016 12:06 pm
by Tarzanus
Wow, these birds must be really well fed :mrgreen: