Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Believe it or not, this bird scare tape really works! The idea behind it is as it flaps and waves in the breeze, it catches light and appears to birds as "predator eyes." We are very pleased with it. It took a day or so for the birdbrains to get the message, but they eventually seemed to decide that our back porch no longer was the tropical paradise they had originally thought. One key suggestion is that, especially at first, it seems useful to move the tape around so that its location is unpredictable and it confuses the birds. For us, an easy way to accomplish that was to tie a 3-4 foot-long streamer to the ends of some old brooms/Swiffers, etc. These are easy to move around like flagpoles. They can be laid on the floor to hang over the edge, leaned against various walls, at different angles against the railings, etc. We also tied a few streamers around the railings, top and bottom spots, that will stay in place. I suggest you not tie them tight. Leave room for them to blow around to the maximum, and leave two tails of different lengths. All of this works best if your area gets some breeze. But, I'm telling you, if the birds were bad enough and it worked to put a fan on the porch to blow these streamers gently in the air, it would be worth it compared to the mess, nuisance and downright destruction an unwelcome flock of birds can cause. The other two products we used were bird repellent discs (reviewed separately) and Turtle Wax. Since I did not buy the car paste wax here, let me just say a word about it. We have an aluminum railing and I looked online to see the best way to maintain it. Many builders and installers using car paste wax. Apply and buff just as you would on a car. (Clean thoroughly first, of course.) The advantages to this in our fight against pigeons soon became clear. (1) The paste wax made the railing, especially the top, quite shiny; this repels birds with that "predator eye" things just as the tape and discs do. (2) The paste wax made the railing slippery - I saw at least three fat ones try to come in for a landing and they went whoops! not today! and took off immediately, having never even gained their footing! (3) The paste wax makes the railing extremely easy to keep clean, and we all know that birds think poop is a "Welcome" mat - now it is easy to clean up right away. (That said, with these three measures in place, we have not had one pigeon try to bless us with his presence.)