Dalen Gardeneer 100055888 Gardeneer by Dalen Solar Action Owl Natural Scarecrow Device, 18in, 18 in. Yellow (Pack of 2)

A picture is worth a thousand words. I swear these squirrels are laughing at me & my plastic owl.

 Oscar is five months old today. He sits patiently atop a "T" post scanning the horizon for something although I'm not sure what. It's time for him to hibernate in the yard barn for the winter as the birds he so fearlessly protected my garden from have all gone south.Even with the sun low in the nearly winter sky he still turns his head from time to time. Perhaps a quarter tern every minute or two. Back in June when he was young and foolish he would sometimes spin his head at a rather alarming rate. The robins thought this was hilarious and started to openly mock him so he eventually got over that.He performs best when he has an audience. Some ladies from my wife's book club were discussing, from a safe distance, whether Oscar was a live owl or stuffed. As the disagreement reached a near fever pitch Oscar spun his head half way around. Fortunately when Oscar's huge reflective yellow eyes turned in their direction only one of them wet her pants.But does he really deter birds? The robins laughed out loud when they saw him and continued to perch on the cucumber trellis as well as on my tomato cages. Barn swallows were building a nest directly over the front door and in fact on the motion sensor that lets us know when the mailman, etc. arrives were a much bigger problem. They may have stayed away for a day.So as a bird deterrent Oscar was not a top performer. He has been and continues to be a great companion and source of amusement that should last for many years as he's very well constructed.If you want to keep flying critters away, the holographic reflective tape is far more effective. A couple pieces strung across the trellis and cages kept everything out of the garden. A couple pieces weighted with a short piece of coat hanger wire and hung vertically kept the barn swallows away from the front door. The tape is inexpensive so you'll have money left to buy your own owl. You can name it whatever you want a long as he's OK with it.

I ordered Owl because we had a pair of ducks who had somehow discovered our tiny little pool, and had proceeded to land on the deck every day, swim in the pool, fowl the pool, the deck, everything, with their fowl poop. So, after an internet search on how to scare away ducks, I ordered Owl.Technically, Owl does everything it is described to do. It looks real. It looks mean. The solar-powered head turns, as long as the sun can hit the solar panel. We moved it around the pool, as suggested. The ducks weren't fooled. They kept coming, sometimes flying near or landing right next to Owl. I'm pretty sure by now they have Friended Owl on Facebook.We resorted to other measures . . . and we appear to have gotten rid of the ducks . . . first by spraying them with the hose whenever they arrived (they always announce their arrival with their quacks), sometimes by throwing tennis balls at them (never hitting them, because our aim isn't that good, but good enough to scare them) and then by hanging / stringing obstacles over the pool to make it uninviting to land / swim in. Haven't seen them in about a week. Owl has filed a grievance for loss of companionship.The good news about Owl is that a stray cat ventured into our back yard the other day, stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Owl, then slowly backed away and exited the yard via the same path he had entered. Wish I had a video of that. I don't think they are Friends on Facebook yet.

We built a pool with a cascade waterfall in Las Vegas (desert) so we were visited by a couple dozen pigeons and black birds everyday with the accompanying mess. I didn't want the unsightly spikes or sticky goop around the pool so I thought I would try a predator replica. The idea of the solar powered head on a horned owl seemed like a good concept.The owl is about 1 1/2 ft tall, very life-like in looks and size. There is nothing to do to get it started, just remove the tag and stand it in the yard.The slightest light in the morning gets it going and it is active until the last light in the evening. The head always rotates in the same direction (doesn't matter) on intervals that vary from about 15 seconds to about 2-3 minutes. The rotations can be from a partial turn to several complete revolutions. Very unpredictable which adds to the realism.It makes a slight audible click when the rotation starts. I thought this might be an issue by alerting the birds it was about to move but just the opposite occurs. In case the bird might not be looking toward the owl when it starts it's movement the click gets the bird's attention assuring the bird will see it.The first birds to arrive after I put it by the waterfall stopped their dive into the yard to land on a privacy wall around the pool area. There was a lot of head tilting as they checked it out to see if it was real or not. As soon as it moved it's head the birds took off in all directions as fast as they could go. The birds returned to sit on the perimeter wall everyday for a few weeks. Sometimes one brave bird in the flock would land to "test the waters" but as soon as the head turned they all scrammed like somebody fired a load of buckshot at them.. The test visits came less and less frequent until, after a couple months, they stopped altogether. We have not had ANY birds in the yard this entire summer even though I can see them in the neighbors' yards.I did not mount it on a stake as the instructions suggests. Instead I filled it with about 10 lbs of sand through an opening in the bottom to give it some weight. This allowed me to move it to different parts of the yard every so often. I did move it a couple times a week at first but have found that now that the birds are convinced it's real I only move it once a month or so.The problem birds that I had to deal with in my neighborhood were pigeons, crows, and blackbirds. They have NEVER returned to the water and stopped flying over the house after the first few weeks.A great item.