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Heron proofing pond

idris

idris

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Joined
3 Jan 2011
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Location
Herts
Our pond has walls of sleepers and is then dug to a total depth of about 2ft, with an area of about 3.5m². (See diagram.)
We know herron visits are a significant risk in this area.
There are plants in baskets that give fish cover for abouit half the pond's area.

I was thinking about rinning some wire or heavy duty monofilament nylon across the pond to deter herons, just below the top of the top sleeper (so probably about 3½" about the water).
Would this be enough to give herons a problem, and if so, what sort of spacing between the wires would be best?

pond_zpscjnvkqpa.jpg
 
Believe it or not herons are not stupid.
I have seen videos of herons step over string / wire, if you are going to use this method it needs to be either high up so they can not land or lots of it.
I would guess your idea is of little use as they can easily stand on the sleeper and lean over. Found a video for you, also note it ignores plastic heron

 
I thought it was common knowledge that plastic herons are more likely to attract herons because they show its a safe place for them and there is likely a reason the other one is there. What you would need would be something herons are scared of.
In my pond I just have total edge coverage of plants which makes finding a spot to stand harder but the best thing is an old chimney pot (18x12" or so) that provides a safe place for the fish to hide (my pond is over 4ft deep so harder for the heron in the first place).
 
I have no idea if it works for Herons, but is seems to work for Pigeons and other birds is plastic Crows. I noticed this in Germany, where it is a common practice in the cities, to put plastic crows on roof gutters, balconies and window sils to scare off pigeons. And it seems to work, also about every pet shop in Germany sells plastic Crows. But in my country as neighbour of Germany, i never ever seen a plastic crow for sale nor in any garden.

Never gave it a try but it kinda makes sense, Crows are predatory and kinda rather known to be mischievous.. Looking at nature, i've never seen other birds mingle with packs of Crows.
 
martin-green said:
Believe it or not herons are not stupid.
I have seen videos of herons step over string / wire
Click to expand...

If you wake up early enough you maybe lucky and catch them doing a Double Dutchy..
Realy had to lauch watching that video.. It was more like a crafty Captain Caveman impersonation in the end. :lol:
 
We have a pretty small pond set into a raised 'patio' area within 2 metres of the rear of the house and over looked by several windows . . . far too close, or so I wrongly assumed, for herons to approach. We were lucky in that we lost only one fish before realising what must be happening, and I bought one of these

Although the one we have is obviously made from pretty nasty cheap plastic, at £20 it does do the job, though I think there are probably better made and more expensive versions. Since all you need is to connect a hose pipe, which most folks are going to have to hand around a pond, I would recommend giving it a try. Of course there's the added bonus that it works just the same with herons, cats, children and unsuspecting grandparents, so you get quite a lot of entertainment for your money.

Would I rely on it completely? Probably not, but I think there's probably an advantage to having something that's going to react in a noisy, scary way even before a heron touches the ground. A few such experiences and I'd hope to be removed from at least that particular bird's visiting list.
 
Sorry to say, but I don't think much to them. Yes they can be amusing, but when you have to go out in the garden and you forget............ also come winter time if the hose freezes.........
They don't always work........watch the clip
 
We net our pond from just before autumn leaves fall until the following spring. Have a couple of long planks of wood on feet that span the pond to hold it above the water. We're in the middle of a housing estate, but they fly over from the nearish canal and you see them sat on the house roof opposite - change from pigeons! Most likely to turn up on the odd years the canal freezes but best to be ready.
 
martin-green said:
Sorry to say, but I don't think much to them. Yes they can be amusing, but when you have to go out in the garden and you forget............ also come winter time if the hose freezes.........
They don't always work........watch the clip
Click to expand...

My pond at around 2.5 feet, isnt deep enough for me to guarantee my shubunkins will be OK through a Yorkshire winter so they're over-wintered in an IBC tote in my shed, however I think winter heron deterrents are a different ball game largely because few of us in the UK are going to go sit by the pond of a winter's evening . . . consequently my go to solution in previous years has been heavy duty plastic garden trellis with the holes about 3/4 inch. I have one over my empty pond right now, but mostly to keep leaves out. My point is I don't really care so much what it looks like from November to March, but thereafter to visually enjoy the pond and the fish I don't really want to be looking through netting or mesh or tripping over wires to tend to it. The water scarer worked very well for me - YMMV of course. And yes it did catch me out once when I was a bit dozy, but I found I woke up pretty damn quickly and learned to make good use of the convenient little off switch thereafter 🙂

The clip is entertaining, but personally I don't really care about the thing not being triggered by garden birds - in fact if it wasn't adjustable so it would mostly ignore blackbirds, thrushes and anything smaller, it would be unusable in my garden. But there's quite a leap from garden birds to something with a six foot wing span like a heron, so lots of margin for error.
 
Just an observation.
Herons probably have a 6 foot wing span.........when flying, they don't when walking on the ground, not so much of a margin for error.
 
From Wikipedia: The grey heron is a large bird, standing up to 100 cm (39 in) tall and measuring 84–102 cm (33–40 in) long with a 155–195 cm (61–77 in) wingspan.

A sparrow it is not!

The point is that I had this thing set up all summer with its sensor aimed (unintentionally really it just worked out this way to run the shortest length of hose and get the best coverage of our pond) pretty much directly at our bird table. When properly set up it was not triggered by blue tits, great tits, robins, sparrows, blackbirds, thrushes etc. but would trigger for anything much larger such as cats and of course larger birds. My better half even commented that she appreciated the way it reacted to our enormously fat local pigeons and the flocks of starlings that strip the bird table bare in short order, but left the little ones alone. That took some experimentation with settings and angles but it worked fine.

Bottom line is that we started the season with 5 shubunkin, lost one to a heron, bought this, and still have four, plus babies. I hope that's useful information to some people, but if it's not for others, that's fine by me.
 
mort said:
I thought it was common knowledge that plastic herons are more likely to attract herons because they show its a safe place for them and there is likely a reason the other one is there.
Click to expand...

Yeah I think this is true. My friend had a pond and had a few fish deaths although he never seen any Heron about a shop suggested that explain the fish deaths. He bought a plastic Heron and within a week a real Heron was turning up all the time. It was summer so I think the Heron must have thought either a possible mate from a distance or the chance to step in on some decent feeding area. Either way once the Heron had turned up it quickly realised the fake and in the main totally ignored it. In fact if anything the fake had pointed out to the real somewhere where there was fish.
 
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