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How to Keep Birds Away From Ponds

A decorative pond filled with graceful, colorful fish adds a natural and attractive element to your garden. If you live in an area where wild animal sightings are common, you need to protect your fish from flying predators. Birds such as the kingfisher and heron love to eat fish, and nothing is more tempting to them than the quick, easy meal a shallow garden pond provides. Birds of prey are persistent, but several repellent methods will help scare them away from your pond and fish.

Things You'll Need

Fence
Decoy
Water scarecrow
Blackbird netting

Instructions

- 1
  Dig your pond as deep as you can if you have not dug it yet. Herons stand in shallow areas of the water to search for their meal. If a pond is deep, fish have a place to hide and herons cannot eat them.
- 2
  Put a fence around the pond. This deters birds from entering the pond from the banks. Some persistent birds may land directly in the water, though.
- 3
  Put up a water scarecrow, a sprinkler that attaches to a house. When a bird flies past the motion sensor, water sprays over the area. This frightens the bird away. Some birds will get used to the water and might ignore it.
- 4
  Place a decoy near the pond. Use a decoy that resembles the bird that is bothering the pond. A decoy's purpose is to scare away troublesome birds. During mating season, though, some birds may not mind the decoy.
- 5
  Tie blackbird netting over the water of the pond. Place the netting high enough so that a bird cannot reach fish through it.
- 6
  Play loud music when you see a bird come near the pond. The noise startles the bird, and it usually flies away. Yelling at the bird sometimes works, too.

Nature