Nanohedron wrote:I'm just waiting for the mulberries to ripen. I'll have to wash my car, then.
Yeah.... colourful.... and when the bird-cherries ripen, we have to chase the pigeons off the flue of the gas fire, because they love dropping the stones down the flue - it makes a really loud rattley noise.
In the summer the Mallards come into the kitchen and try to pinch the food from the catfood dish. We have to chase them out gently, so they don't crap all over the floor.
They swarm in clouds along roadways. They get lodged in radiators and clog them and make splattered messes all over windshields, which the wipers and washer just smear around. They take the finish right off car bumpers.
If they're really thick, you have to put a fine mesh "surgical mask" like thing over your grillwork and petroleum jelly the windshield, press plastic wrap into it, duct tape the edges, and stop every few miles to replace the plastic. And wash your car every day to keep the guts that get through all this from taking the paint right off.
They sound like the caddisflies (mayflies) here. For a week or two the air is full of them, and then they all die, so that the ground crunches underfoot, the beaches are polluted, and it seems one is always re-washing the car.
As I recall, blue herons are reputed to have the most offensive droppings, for the smell (fish diet), for the fact that it kills trees the nests are in, and literally strips the paint off cars.
Remarkable bird, the blue heron. Beautiful plumage. Where have I heard this before?
djm
I'd rather be atop the foothills than beneath them.
Yes, blue heron droppings are remarkably disgusting, not to mention voluminous. Acrid, rotting fish. Fortunately, they walk around a lot, so they don't normally deposit on cars.
Well, unless you've got one that's taken to standing on your car.
re: nasty bird poop: I'm not sure the blue heron's is any worse than other fish-eating birds'.
I volunteered for several years at the International Bird Rescue Research Center (they of the now infamous alien-in-a-duck radiograph), and so I've taken care of thousands and thousands of waterbirds. All of the fish-eating fowl had nasty, watery, stinky, foul poop. If the blue heron's is any grosser than any other birds', it must be a matter of tiny and imperceptible degree.
(And anyway, the blue heron doesn't really have a fish-centered diet. The ones I've handled have been generally predatory, and I've found them full of gophers, smaller birds, mice and rats, crabs, etc. Fish is just part of what they eat.)
But grosser than any of the poop is this habit that cormorants and pelicans have: they vomit mostly-digested fish onto you when they're upset. You'd pick up an ailing brown pelican -- and they're big! -- and immediately try to direct its gullet away from you, or you'd be wearing maybe 60 partially digested herring, and a copious amount of pelican stomach fluids and acids and goop. And then you'd have the disgusting task of scraping all of that soft, lumpy, stinky fish and slime off of your clothing and the floor. Just try not to gag. No one wanted to stand close to you if that happened. And man is that a stink that lingers, all day!
