This is maybe one of the more unusual requests for any advice/suggestions.
I have an unwanted visitor in my chai, an owl - a barn owl I suspect, since I’ve seen one around.
It turned up just over a year ago and since then the resultant mess has become unacceptable. Everything has to be covered with tarps and after a year they are in such a state I’m having to replace them.
Walking around isn’t much fun, nor is the smell.
I now need rid - but emphasise I just want to deter it from taking up residence, nothing more.
If there had been an electric supply I’d have tried a light with motion sensor but that’s not an option.
This is a big double hight old barn with big beams but during the day its very light and I’ve never spotted the bird, so guess my beams are an ideal transient perch while digesting, before heading off somewhere else.
Bill, I put up a post some time ago about the noise made by fledgling little owls.
They stopped me from getting to sleep for a few weeks.
It was only the one year and they did not return.
Probably they did not like the blue air.
I love having owls around George but appreciate the problem, as we had pooping pigeons in our barn, so impossible to use the barn.
A wire fixed about 8ins above the perch/beam to discourage it landing may do the trick, shame it has to go!
Most years a pair of swallows nest in my barn just above where I keep a classic car. Both cars that are parked in the barn are covered because of the amount of bat poo around but under the nest I place a plastic lined cardboard box to collect the droppings. I’m with the others on this topic, if I had an owl in my barn I’d see that as a positive thing.
However, as per the original post, the barn has no power so that rules out anything electric.
It’s also a very large barn - think big church with inaccessible beams - which also rules out attaching anything to the beams. They are simply far beyond my ladders, which reach a 2 storey house plus.
The owl also seems to move around, letting fly from just about every beam - and that means literally everything has to be covered with tarps, from firewood to summer garden furniture for the gites and us; garden tools etc; ride on; trailer et al.
Everytime you go into the barn you have to move tarps just to move around and when you eventually leave what is fast becoming a no go zone you literally have to clean your shoes.
Much as I also like owls this is not pleasurable.
I also cannot park the car in the chai, and had to refuse a friend who has just bought a 35ft motorhome and wanted to park it there during one of his pan France trips
What are the cars Dom’, I was involved renovating an Aston, DBS V8,1970, when I win the lotto, I will go to Switzerland and make the present owner, an offer He can’t refuse.
Have you got open ends to your barn George, you could just hang wires down from the entrances.
You could try one of those plastic birds of prey with a moving head that revolves in the wind, they sell them on Amazon, I know they keep small birds away in our carport but you have to keep moving its location or they get use to it.
Hello George
You say you don’t have electricity to the barn. Is there any way you could fix, on the exterior, one of those motion sensor lamps ?
I do know they have them that work by solar power but don’t know how effecient they are!
I am just thinking that lights coming on and off may deter him/her …
Another thought, how about a radio with loud music as well.
Don’t forget that owls are a nuisance to you (and I do understand how unpleasant an upsetting the mess is) but they are a protected species and yours is there because you must have a lot of rodents around. I once had one of those doormouse things make a nest around the air filter, found by the garage, so beware of that with your cars!
Final thought… cats !
Good luck
Approaching it another way… Prhaps there are online resources that could help build a shelter that the owl would find preferable to the barn?
We do have owls very nearby which I like. We are also fortunate that they are not in either of the barns. We did see some properties last year that had owls, I thought the dropping were from cats and would not want those falling on the bokes, or me, from on high.
