YOFIT Bird Scarecrow Fake Horned Hawk Decoy,Bird Repellent Garden Protectors, Natural Enemy Pest Deterrent Scarecrow

It works to deter birds

Firstly, this is a "falcon," not a "horned hawk" whatever is that is supposed to be... lol.Secondly, pick the right bird for the prey/pest you're trying to scare off. If you're trying to scare away pigeons, then an owl is not likely going to do much good, as I bet most pigeons have never even seen an owl. Conversely, falcons mostly eat birds and like to attack in mid-air, so they are especially fearsome to pigeons, but don't expect a falcon to scare away moles. Falcons aren't known for diving 200 mph straight into the dirt, unless maybe they are trying to commit suicide...Thirdly, prey aren't dumb. Especially pigeons. On top of this, pigeons are descended from domestic pigeons, who are pretty brazen, and they're definitely not afraid of humans. And although they are definitely afraid of falcons, you have to make them continue to believe he's real, and do what the product notes say, i.e., keep moving him around, and bring him inside sometimes, and definitely do not leave him out overnight for days at a time and never move him around, or he will be undoubtedly perceived as a garden ornament.... which then you will end up in the situation, that you have seen with all the lovely and funny one star review photos of pigeons perched on his head.... moral of the story, be smarter than the birds! Keep the prey guessing, keep the prey scared!Fourthly, this thing is cheap, and can't fill it with water, it leaks, so either make sure you have a nice flat surface you can put him on in different spots, or put some rocks or something in his base, because if he tips over, boom, cover blown! Pigeons will be singing, "Ding dong the witch is dead" and will probably have to get a new bird or they'll think it's the same one that's not real that they previously saw dead.Following the above guidelines, I basically wipe out the entire bird population for a full city block for the duration of his watch duties each time I put him out on my porch... so I mean, this thing works great, almost too great. But just be smarter than the birds!

While it didn't work for an Eastern Towhee, it may work for other misguided songbirds. I bought this, a day-hunter (instead of an owl, which hunts at night), since the towhee is active in the day. Funny that the description says "Horned Hawk" as there is no such bird. This is painted and shaped to represent a Peregrine Falcon, which is a fast and formidable hunter of birds. It could be a threat in the minds of songbirds, except that Peregrines fly high and stoop onto prey mid-air from behind; i.e., songbirds often don't see the predator coming. Still, they usually avoid being near actual or images of all predatory birds. Rubber snakes hung on the side mirrors did work to deter the towhee from my car.Anyway, this plastic raptor seems sturdy, and the hole to place sand or rocks in made it stable on fenceposts and other perches in the wind. I'll get it out again next summer if other birds, or this one if he returns from his winter home, attack my car next breeding season. Perhaps if I get the falcon perched in the first day or so of a songbird attacking its reflection on my car, it would be more effective. (The towhee was 3 weeks into its car attacks when I bought and put the raptor out.)

It didn’t work at all. The intended pests weren’t scared of it at all. They literally landed on it.

Package arrived all beat up and open on both sides. I’m surprised the item didn’t fall out. Someone had taken packing tape and wrapped around package to keep it together. The hawk is nice. The coloring is good, but it didn’t do what I needed it to do which was get rid of a group of grackles. They are not deterred by it at all so if you read that on the Internet, don’t believe it.

It was a super hot summer this year and my wife and I don't have an air conditioner in our bedroom. We never have. The kids have them in their rooms, but we don't because my wife tends to get cold easily. I avoided putting one in our room because I was concerned that I'd crank it way down and then she'd get up in the middle of the night and turn it off. Then, of course, I'd inevitably wake up hot as hell and angry. Better to just not have one and avoid a fight with the woman of my dreams.The first thing I do every day when I wake up is to open the curtains to look outside on the street. We live in a big city, so you never know what you'll see when you stand there in your undies looking outside. And yes, you read that correctly: she closes the curtains to make it dark at night. So there's not a lotta air flow. This one particular morning, I woke up and pulled my head off the soaking wet sponge that I formerly called a pillow and opened the curtain. To my surprise, I heard a weird fluttering sound I hadn't ever heard outside of my window. There were two pigeons that I had surprised when I opened the curtain and they circled back and stubbornly planted themselves right back on the window ledge. I had heard from a neighbor that you don't want them nesting and getting used to hanging out near your window because they will possibly nest and make noise and generally be a nuisance.I'm an old school guy, you know? I walk around my big city and I see how some of the bigger buildings deal with this problem. You see long rows of spikes tacked onto ledges of roofs and other edges of the apartment buildings. That's what I needed, I thought. So I went to my local hardware store and asked about these spiky strips. The kid at the store laughed at me a little and said, "No, no... those are illegal now. You can't get em. I can't sell them to you." I was confused. I thought maybe I was supposed to slip him five bucks and say, "But NOW you can sell em to me, right??" But before I could bribe the kid, he said, "You should buy those little plastic strips that reflect light. The birds hate those." Unfortunately he didn't have any in stock.So I went home and checked Amazon. I found those reflector strips the kid recommended, but all the reviews seemed the same... I'm paraphrasing about 300 negative reviews into one basic, common review: "These things work, but they're annoying as hell and make a racket outside, but the birds really don't like em!" I didn't want to install these outside my bedroom window for obvious reasons, so I kept scanning Amazon.Luckily, I found this YOFIT Fake Plastic Hawk that seemed to be very highly reviewed. And let me assure you, good old Huxley Hawk has really done the trick. Those freaking pigeons are ALL OVER the neighbors' houses. Not mine. They are obviously afraid of Huxley Hawk. How did we come up with the name for our fake plastic bird of prey, you ask? Easy. It had to be an H name for the benefit of alliteration of course. We settled on Huxley because it is of English origin meaning "inhospitable place." So Huxley Hawk sort of exists to create an inhospitable place for these dirty city pigeons.I highly recommend this product and even though it's advised that you rotate the bird to different places and inside sometime, I have never moved Huxley once. He's always right there and the pigeons poop themselves when they see him. I think pigeons are maybe dumb? I don't know. One thing to note, however: they don't provide you with rocks or sand or anything to weigh Huxley down so he can weather the wind and rain and other elements. I don't just have sand lying around so I took these rubber medical gloves we have and filled like 7 of them with water and shoved them into Huxley's body. Dude hasn't moved an inch and guards our building like the good soldier that he is.Last thing to mention here is that I've caught a few amateur birders snapping pics of Huxley. These old timers think he's real! The first time it happened, I was walking my dog down the block and some older woman had her phone out pointed at my house! I didn't understand why she'd be taking a photo of my house when I knew I wasn't up in the bedroom window with just my underwear on. What other reason?? And then I remembered Huxley... she saw that I was going into my house and she put a finger to her lips telling me to be quiet. "There's a hawk up there!" she whispered. I just giggled and clapped my hands as loud as I could. Then I did it again and again... Huxley obviously never moved. She looked at me strange and I said, "I guess he's dead!"