Do you like ducks? I certainly do. If… they are living on a nice lake or pond, swim and catch bugs, frogs, small fish, as well as migrate and pause to have their young in a nice quiet place.
I do not like ducks when they are living in communities where they mess up walkways, patios, bully other animals, beg for food, breed uncontrolled, or get aggressive towards pets and people.
Here in South Florida, we have lots of species that come from other countries and are not native. One of them is the Muscovy duck. Coming most likely from South America, brought here as a pet, released illegally, they multiplied and spread out into communities – and trust me they are not migratory birds as they are so huge and heavy, they would not be able to fly a mile. They passed a law that these ducks are now considered part of the wildlife, but you are not allowed to remove and release them somewhere else – they need to be confined and not interfere with the native wildlife. There is only a small number of people that are licensed to remove and put them in a contained place. One of them has a farm where they can live. Besides putting them into a confined space there is only one other option, and I don’t want that. I love animals, annoying or not, and I do not want them to be even humanely euthanized if they do not have a contained place for them.
That means you are stuck with these birds. Especially if you live in a community that does not take care to keep the numbers down and has plenty of people feeding the ducks, which is the absolutely worst you can do. Besides people food being unhealthy for them it creates fights among the ducks for the food, they move and breed closer to the food source and get even more aggressive with people and pets.
We had ducks breeding between the doors of our building for several years. People were throwing bread down from the top to feed the ducks. But they kind of had their young and then went back towards the lake and the backyard. Then our neighbor with her two little kids thought it was cute to feed the ducks out front and since then the ducks moved in permanently. They breed on her side, eat her flowers and herbs from her flowerpots she keeps outside, eat the beautiful orchids she has around the trees, sleep in front of our doors, mess up the concrete patio really bad. Every morning I had to go out and clean the front with the garden hose. By afternoon it was messed up again. It was terrible and annoying.
Especially because I feed my 4 stray cats out front, and this duck mess is disgusting. I could not let them eat in-between this mess. And I have to defend my cats from the ducks that were trying to steal their food every time using a water spray bottle. But it only works for a short amount of time. I also have a small cat tree out front where I put a water bowl for my cats, so they have water to drink in that heat. I was away for several months, so I told my husband to put water bowls for the cats, as he was feeding mainly dry food. But he put the bowls on the bottom of the cat tree and in the cameras, we have out front I found the ducks drinking and even taking a bath in those water bowls, which made them undrinkable for my cats. So, he put the water bowl on the next step of the cat tree, but there were still the huge ducks that could drink from there and mess up the water with sand and slimy stuff and undrinkable again for my cats. I needed a solution fast.
So, I went for the hunt to find a solution to this problem. Removing the ducks is no option, as that would have to be done by the condo association and they are not doing anything. The internet is full of ‘solutions’ but is there anything that really works?
There are the obvious things to keep the population down – remove the eggs and the nest completely and cover it. There are certain smells they don’t like, cayenne pepper being one of them. So, putting some cayenne pepper on the covered-up hole where the nest was should discourage them from making the nest there again. But it does not discourage them from making a nest next to it. So that solution only partially works, unless you buy 10lb of cayenne pepper and spread it everywhere.
Next there are those ultrasonic animal repellants, either solar powered or with batteries. It might work, but having my stray cats around it would also keep them away, which is a cannot do.
Then we have motion sprinklers. Not sure that that would work on our ducks here as they enjoy a good soaking in the Florida heat. But even if they would work, we have kids, pets, and my outdoor cats that would trigger those sprinklers too. So, not a good option for a condo building.
Next, we have duck repellant sprays. There are many different ones out there and they either smell so bad that it would be impossible to use them outside your front door, or they work for a few days or until it rains and then you start all over.
Then I read that people were suggesting putting a ‘predator’ to scare the ducks away. A real dog is out of the question, as our condo is too small for dogs. Our neighbor has a golden retriever, but she is so gentle that the ducks just ignore her. Now there are several decoys you can get, like owls, coyotes, alligators, hawks and the likes, but looking at the size of our humongous ducks they are not going to be scared by anything. They also have kites in the shape of hawks, eagles or huge balloons with big eyes, but I do not have the space for flying kites or balloons.
Another thing I read about is the different smells the ducks dislike. One is vinegar. So, I made a spray bottle with vinegar and water and sprayed it all over – the ducks just ignored it. Then there was the suggestion of using peppermint oil. I got some oil and cotton balls – put them in a container with a lid and poked holes in the lid to let the smell out. It smelled delicious, which I guess the ducks found too, as they paid no attention to the container, I had placed next to the water bowl.
Then came the shiny things ducks are scared of. Anything reflecting would deter a duck. At least it said so. I went ahead and bought some Silver Bird Reflective Tape, some Silver Bird Repellant Spiral Reflectors and a package of Silver Reflective Pinwheels. I assembled the spirals and pinwheels and put them around the patio in the ground. It was also a little windy and they started making some noise and by turning, reflecting the light. Let’s put it this way, for a couple of days it worked pretty well, especially with the female ducks. But then the smaller ducks could sneak through in-between the pinwheels and the huge ducks just plowed through. But it helped a little to make it more difficult to go to the patio and it was a little bit cleaner, at least for a few days.
Then I thought, well, if I put more of these pinwheels, put them closer together, it would make it even more of a bother to go through. Halloween is coming so I bought some reflecting orange pinwheels. I have to say, they are much better, as they are a little bit larger and easier to turn in the wind. That worked also for a couple of days until the big ducks plowed through again.
I was starting to the end of my ideas when I was standing in the backyard and looked at the white small 6″ high garden bed borders and I thought, well, maybe that will work in addition to the pinwheels. So, I got some from the backyard and put them behind the pinwheels. It does keep the smaller ducks from going over, but the big ones still storm over them. Now as a last resort I bought a decorative garden fence that is 16″ high. The cats can still jump over the fence, but the big ducks won’t be able to walk over the fence.
This is so far the only thing that is really working to keep them out of the space and will make it more uncomfortable for the ducks to get on the patio, as they now have to go around. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that it will work and we can get the ducks back to the lake where they belong.
If you have any other ideas I can try, please put them in the comments. I am open to try anything.