# Best Way to Keep Owls Away from Yard? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 21, 2012, 7:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-way-to-keep-owls-away-from-yard/638397 "2012-10-21T07:57:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2012, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-way-to-keep-owls-away-from-yard/638397/41 "2012-10-23T17:18:20Z")
Try rubber snakes. Birds hate snakes. ---
**Author:** ![CannyDan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cannydan/32/548_2.png) [@CannyDan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CannyDan)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2012, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-way-to-keep-owls-away-from-yard/638397/42 "2012-10-23T17:36:18Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > Try rubber snakes. Birds hate snakes. Is this a whoosh? Raptors including owls predate snakes. ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2012, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-way-to-keep-owls-away-from-yard/638397/43 "2012-10-23T20:32:47Z")
> [@Maastricht](#): > > Pure wealth, you guys. Enjoy it while you can. There have been a few news stories recently pointing out that if we’re seeing coyotes in Chicago, fer chrissakes, and foxes and other medium-scale predators, it may well be a matter of time before we start seeing bears & mountain lions in inhabited areas on a regular basis. This will not end well. ---
**Author:** ![April\_R](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3da27b/32.png) [@April\_R](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/April_R)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2012, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-way-to-keep-owls-away-from-yard/638397/44 "2012-10-23T20:57:10Z")
I guess in the US we still have more land than people per capita. And we are constantly encroaching on wild habitat so interaction between people and wildlife is inevitable. My female chow chow when we lived in Alaska had a regular visit from a fox for a winter. He would yoodle at my dog who would bark back then get a mouth full of dog food which she would walk over to the fence and lay it down for the fox to eat. We also had moose who regularly came up to my window to eat from the willows which grew in our back yard. In Tennessee, right outside of the city of Memphis we see raccoons and red tailed hawks. I also once saw a juvenile bald eagle eating from a fish farm/pay-to-fish place for a few weeks two summers ago. When I contacted the local Parks department they speculated he had stopped there on his way up North. Pretty cool. I hadn’t seen bald eagles outside of captivity since I lived in Alaska. Apparently they are known to nest at Reel Foot Lake which is north of me, I should go check it out with my kids sometime. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2012, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-way-to-keep-owls-away-from-yard/638397/45 "2012-10-23T21:35:33Z")
> [@CannyDan](#): > > Is this a whoosh? Raptors including owls predate snakes. Get bigger snakes? Sorry, I was thinking of keeping pigeons off the ledge. ---
**Author:** ![CannyDan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cannydan/32/548_2.png) [@CannyDan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CannyDan)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2012, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-way-to-keep-owls-away-from-yard/638397/46 "2012-10-23T21:52:36Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > Get bigger snakes? Sorry, I was thinking of keeping pigeons off the ledge. 😉 No harm done. Rubber snakes are indeed sometimes effective for pigeons, although not for very long. Since it doesn’t move and doesn’t eat anybody, the once scary object soon becomes relegated to ‘furniture’ status and ignored. ---
**Author:** ![GiantRat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@GiantRat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GiantRat)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2012, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-way-to-keep-owls-away-from-yard/638397/47 "2012-10-24T05:50:55Z")
A shotgun should solve your problem. And prevent a Hitchcock nightmare from becoming reality. ---
**Author:** ![Maastricht](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a88e57/32.png) [@Maastricht](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maastricht)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2012, 7:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-way-to-keep-owls-away-from-yard/638397/48 "2012-10-24T07:54:32Z")
> [@April\_R](#): > > My female chow chow when we lived in Alaska had a regular visit from a fox for a winter. He would yoodle at my dog who would bark back then get a mouth full of dog food which she would walk over to the fence and lay it down for the fox to eat. I think Disney made a movie out of that. Awww. ---
**Author:** ![Sahirrnee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sahirrnee/32/13937_2.png) [@Sahirrnee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sahirrnee)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2012, 9:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-way-to-keep-owls-away-from-yard/638397/49 "2012-10-24T09:49:50Z")
If it’s allowed where you live you could try fireworks to drive the owls away. One of the neighborhoods down the road did that when they were overtaken by a flock of buzzards. You could see the buzzards though, so you knew where they were. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2012, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-way-to-keep-owls-away-from-yard/638397/50 "2012-10-24T12:48:11Z")
Owls are way cool, and unlike cats they don’t crap all over the yard. We have some around here, and there are nights you can hear them hooting back and forth. “Kittens here…good eats…who-hoo-hoo”. ---
**Author:** ![Laggard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9de053/32.png) [@Laggard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Laggard)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2012, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-way-to-keep-owls-away-from-yard/638397/51 "2012-10-24T12:57:23Z")
Flushed a GHOW a couple weeks back while birding. Just an awesome bird capable of taking cats, rabbits, squirrels and other small mamals. ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2012, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-way-to-keep-owls-away-from-yard/638397/52 "2012-10-24T14:17:32Z")
> [@Maastricht](#): > > Wiki says they often use abandoned nests of the Common Buzzard. And big hollows in trees and abandoned attics. So in winter, remove those or close them off and you are less likely to have Great Horned Owls on your property. > > By the way, it is a constant amazement for me to see how casually rich you people are in wildlife. In Holland we have a relative of the Great Horned Owl, we call it the OeHoe. They are very, very rare. It is front page news of a local paper when one shows up. One known nesting site has bird enthusiasts from all over the country making pelgrimages to look at the owl family with binoculars and cameras. At the place I work, conservationists know the exact whereabouts of all the twenty pairs of Oehoes in the province. When they show up in a quarry, it is seriously debated with the quarry’s owner if he should stop working that part of the quarry and be compensated for it. _That_ is how we think of wildlife. > > Contrast that with you. " Oh, a mountain lion always comes in and eats the cat food" . “My stray cats are picked off by the Great Horned Owl that sometimes drops by”. “How can I get rid of those pesky bears in my back yard? They [use my kids play equipment](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk9L4BkKYXo)”. As do the [foxes on my trampoline](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1Ztq1SjxnU). ? > > Pure wealth, you guys. Enjoy it while you can. People forget how very much of America has nothing on it. A friend who had visitors from Australia told me that when they got to the house from the airport they wouldn’t get out of her car until she assured them that the squirrels on the lawn were not, in fact, dangerous. (I suppose in Australia it’s best to assume any strange animal has murder on its mind.) We don’t even _see_ squirrels unless they’re doing something particularly cute or stupid - they’re just part of the backdrop. And don’t think it’s super-common to see charismatic wild predators for most Americans in cities, by the way. I live in a medium sized city. Deer, yes. Turkeys, every now and again when I go out into the countryside - saw some this weekend but it’s been years before that. Little creatures like squirrels and a bazillion birds, sure. By the water there’s cooler birds like herons and egrets. Hawks and bats way overhead, yes. Racoons, sometimes. Opossums - do you count the dead ones by the side of the road? Or when your dog trees one at night and won’t come in. But a bear in somebody’s back yard makes the front page of the paper, bobcats are extremely shy, owls are heard way more often than seen, etc. So it’s not like most of us are bitching about the damned mountain lions out there _again_. Oh, wait, I just accidentally lied - there’s a big alligator in the river where I run in the morning, but I’ve never seen him. My fiance has, though. If that counts, that’s by far the biggest native predator I’ve seen bebopping around town. ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2012, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-way-to-keep-owls-away-from-yard/638397/53 "2012-10-25T22:19:46Z")
Wife went out to find her entire flock of fancy miniture chickens (except one very scared one) torn up and scattered around the yard. :mad: ---
**Author:** ![araminty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b5e925/32.png) [@araminty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/araminty)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2012, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-way-to-keep-owls-away-from-yard/638397/54 "2012-10-25T22:56:27Z")
You didn’t mention the chickens! Sorry to hear they got got. Luckily most urban predators are nocturnal, so locking up your flock at dusk, in a tight enough coop, is usually successful in keeping hens safe. ---
**Author:** ![Filbert](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/filbert/32/3433_2.png) [@Filbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Filbert)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2012, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-way-to-keep-owls-away-from-yard/638397/55 "2012-10-25T23:48:28Z")
> [@Zsofia](#): > > People forget how very much of America has nothing on it. > > A friend who had visitors from Australia told me that when they got to the house from the airport they wouldn’t get out of her car until she assured them that the squirrels on the lawn were not, in fact, dangerous. (I suppose in Australia it’s best to assume any strange animal has murder on its mind.) We don’t even _see_ squirrels unless they’re doing something particularly cute or stupid - they’re just part of the backdrop. That’s a really weird attitude for Australians; they have a much lower population density than the US, and a lot of wildlife- even in the centre of cities, and no, most of it isn’t at all dangerous, and the residents are generally really laid back about the ones that potentially are when they’re not playing ‘wind up the tourists’. No Aussie mammals are dangerous, unless you’re prone to picking up male platypuses or hugging echidnas I suppose. Incidently, I live near the centre of a decent size city in the UK, and squirrels are everywhere around here, as are foxes, and there’s actually a decent population of tawny owls living in the park. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_Torque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2012, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-way-to-keep-owls-away-from-yard/638397/56 "2012-10-26T13:50:03Z")
Confession time: who else read the thread title and thought **Futurama**? Hermes: “Someone’s been leaving food around and it’s attracting owls. And I for one am tired of cleaning out the owl traps!” _distant sound: \>snap\< “WHOOO!!”_ ---
**Author:** ![dorsk188](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f05b48/32.png) [@dorsk188](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dorsk188)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2012, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-way-to-keep-owls-away-from-yard/638397/57 "2012-10-29T00:08:40Z")
Thanks for all of the (not all that) helpful input, guys. I suspected there may not be any easy answers, but if any message board would have had them, it would be this one. I’m down from 3 cats to 2, but she may have gone missing for any of a dozen reasons. The owl hooting has largely abated, and I’m hoping they were just moving through (or the increased activity was some owl turf war that’s now over). Like I said, my cats are spayed and neutered and we don’t really have a big feral cat problem to my knowledge. My cats were strays from a nearby town. They’re never going to be inside cats, but one sleeps inside some on cold nights if I notice him wanting in. In any case, I’ve bought an owl decoy and am putting it up, (at the very least it might cut down on crows). The upward-facing light _seems_ to give some ground cover so I’ll probably keep doing that for a while. Can’t say it works, but it at least makes sense to me that it would. Also, it might let the cats see a swooping owl if they wouldn’t otherwise. As for the owl envy and general affection for raptors in the thread, I generally share the feeling. Oh, well. > [@Max\_Torque](#): > > Confession time: who else read the thread title and thought **Futurama**? I’ve been thinking about that since I first thought that they might be a problem. At least I’m reasonably sure that golden marmosets don’t hunt cats or live in the area…:eek: ---
**Author:** ![mofiddly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e5b9ba/32.png) [@mofiddly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mofiddly)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2014, 10:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-way-to-keep-owls-away-from-yard/638397/58 "2014-01-17T10:16:50Z")
i lost a cat to a owl attack. i started looking for a way to keep them away, and ran across “Nite-Guard solar”. ordered one from the web, do a google search for their site. very simple device. plan on making my own for other areas of the property. seems to work, haven’t heard the owl for a month now. they cost about twenty dollars, got mine from their site on ebay. ---
**Author:** ![AskNott](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asknott/32/5790_2.png) [@AskNott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AskNott)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2014, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-way-to-keep-owls-away-from-yard/638397/59 "2014-01-17T20:59:56Z")
The cats and owls are competitors for a common prey. Every place has mice and voles. Owls kill 'em for a living, but domesticated cats hunt because they are predators at heart. Neither owls nor cats will kill all the mice. Doing so would cause them to hunt farther afield, which is hazardous. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2014, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-way-to-keep-owls-away-from-yard/638397/60 "2014-01-17T21:27:36Z")
If the OP is motivated primarily from a desire to help the cats, there’s bad news: the only way to make the owls go away is to do something that will probably make the cats go away, too. BOTH the cats AND the owls are probably going to your yard because you have rats and/or mice running around. As long as rodents are around, you probably CAN’T easily keep away local predators that love to eat them. Get rid of your rats and mice, and you won’t get any more owls. But you probably won’t get as many cats, either. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-way-to-keep-owls-away-from-yard/638397.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-way-to-keep-owls-away-from-yard/638397.md?page=4)