red tide, green crabs, eiders & gulls an all the stuff left

[JSmith]

This summer has been unreal in the "cleaning up after the gulls" on Muskrats decks.

All the eiders have moved into coves to eats green crabs which they do when their normal diet of mussels become red tide infested. I read somewhere that was how the indians knew not to eat shellfish-see what the eiders are eating before they feasted.

A subplot to this is the gulls follow the eiders around waiting for them to get a crab. Since the ducks need to eat the crab a little bit at a time it gives the gulls a chance to fly in and grab it. The end result is a boat deck covered with crab claws and legs and what's left after the rest is eaten, digested, and discharged.

The stuff is like 5200!!!!!!! you have to scrub & scrub to get it off! As a last resort we have laced the boat with lines stretching back and forth over the boom. Also fore & aft over the booms ( it goes right through the sail cover and stains:(( ). The whole process does not look too great and takes 20 min to rig & unrig.

We're wondering about a remote that will blow a horn every time I see them- we can see the boat from the front porch. What do they do with pelicans?? God that must be brutal!

In the past we always have a few calling cards from the gulls and call it part of life on the coast. Maybe we just have to hope for the end of the red tide and call it good- any good gull diverter ideas?

Jon

[Quetzalsailor]

In our neck of the woods, the scourge is Ospreys. All manner of dangling deterrents have been devised. None really work. Folks on moorings very typically spend an hour or more scrubbing the tenacious stuff off their boats.

I've made a tent of bird netting which covers the boat from mast to stern, above the boom, and from lifeline to lifeline. It's a pain to rig and unrig but seems to keep the birds off the lower parts of the boat.

But, it's a sailboat...there are upper parts. I've made a little rig that lifts on both flag halyards and results in a line extending parallel to, and about 6" above the spreaders. Keeps them off the spreaders. Nothing I've got keeps them off the tricolor. One fellow has a brush-type lightning rod, which he says keeps them off his masthead.

[JSmith]

we have no problem with the top of the mainmast because our pig stick is tall enough to keep the birds from roosting/squatting on the masthead. No spreader issues either----hopefully!

[Oscar]

Ah yes, the ospreys.....dealt with that. He set up shop on top of the mast, bent the windex out of his way. This took care of him:

[Hulukupu]

In Bristol, the Ospreys were trying to set-up shop on a microwave antenna much higher up than a mast. I guess all those brushes on the sailboat masts forced them into Verizon land.
I really enjoyed the natural history of the eiders and the red tide in this thread. I remember when fish hawks were relatively rare along the Maine coast. My 14 yr-old son got nothing but pleasure out of watching the Ospreys this summer snatch mackerel and flounder from around our Triton, while the eiders were quietly eating crabs by the bar. His gr-gr-uncle used to sail packets out of Philadelphia when there were crews to scrub the remains off the decks. I'll bet the brushes weren't the same, but the curses were.

[Quetzalsailor]

Oscar's stuff is 'Nixalite'. http://www.nixalite.com/ For buildings. Various materials and other mfrs are available.

[JSmith]

Well as soon as the state said it was ok to harvest mussels and clams in the mid coast the problem has disappeared- all the eiders left to nibble small mussels and the gulls (aka dump ducks) are back to their old haunts. No more lines draped all over!

We have a pair of ospreys nesting for the last 15 years on the inner spindle in Cozy Harbor (about 150 feet away) but thankfully they cann't get around the pig stick- if it's not up they'll try to sit there and when they take off---LOOK OUT- it must be the great strain of lift off that causes the discharge but it is voluminous!