A few months ago I put up a bird feeder on my deck, filled with wild bird seed (millet, safflower, sunflower, corn). It has a built-in camera, and I’ve gotten some photos of local birds, mostly towhees, juncos and scrub jays.
I recently was out of town for two weeks. When I left, the feeder had a bit of food left in it, but not much. When I returned, I found my deck was adorned with a large amount of bird shit that wasn’t there when I left. There are over 60 spots of watery white bird shit spread across the deck. They’re not particularly clustered near the feeder, so I’m not positive the feeder is related, although it’s now empty.
There are also several large rips in my screen door near the floor, starting about 6 inches above the floor and 6 or 7 inches long. Apparently a large bird attacked the screen with its beak or claws?
The bird droppings are large, up to 4 inches across, so I don’t think they came from towhees or juncos. The only birds around here that I think are large enough to leave these droppings are ravens and seagulls. Ravens are more likely; seagulls aren’t common right around my house but ravens are ubiquitous, squawking in the trees and flying around constantly. In fact they’ve been acting rather odd the last couple of months, flying around in groups of a dozen or so, and being more loud and active than usual. I’ve seen a group of ravens chasing a group of smaller birds.
So I’m wondering what kind of scene was going on on my deck during those two weeks. Were the ravens using my deck as a headquarters while they patrolled the neighborhood? Did it start when they discovered the seed that the towhees were eating? (Unfortunately I turned off the camera before we left so I wouldn’t have to deal with a backlog of photos when I returned. That was a big mistake.) Since we’ve returned yesterday, there haven’t been any birds visiting the deck.
I have a squirrel that knocks on my door in the morning if I haven’t left any nuts out yet. I ran out once and he ripped my screen door by climbing up and bouncing back and forth.
The birds are not so bad, lots of bird feeders around.
A couple of weeks ago, a few crows seemed to be going kind of nuts on the roof of our house in the middle of the day, right above the bathroom skylight (San Francisco, “flat” roof with 2 skylights). I couldn’t tell if they were fighting with each other, or competing for sexual favors, or what. I banged a pole a couple of times against the skylight and they went somewhere else, which is all I wanted. I figured it was a Spring happening of some kind (but if it was about sex, it was kind of late; the local pair already have at least one hatched chick).
I’ve found that spraying bird droppings liberally with a cleaner that contains ammonia (like a window cleaner, but it doesn’t have to be that specifically) and letting it sit for 10 minutes greatly eases clean up. Of course, you might want to test the surface beforehand to make sure the cleaner doesn’t do damage.
It’s possible the larger birds leaving the droppings, and a squirrel, were attracted by the smaller ones. And I suspect the screen door issue is squirrel related. With no one around for a while all the critters got comfy in checking out your place.
My late mother in law had a bird feeder that attracted a lot of pigeons. Unfortunately, they attracted in turn hawks. I wonder if the large poop belongs to hawks.
From the images I see online, hawk scat is more pellet-like than these splashes of white I’m seeing. In fact, the stuff on my deck looks more like pictures of seagull scat than raven scat, but I’d be very surprised if gulls were hanging out on my deck. But who knows, it’s really a mystery to me why any birds were hanging out on my deck in large numbers. I’m also doubtful that squirrels were involved. There aren’t any trees or power lines nearby that would allow a squirrel to easily access the deck.
