Deck Plate Nest Cavity Preventers

[Guest]

I was really just doing this for my own shop play with leftover materials, but mentioned it to a friend who, unbeknownst to me, also has bird nest and canoe issues. What’s that German word? “Schadenfreude”, I’m not really deriving pleasure from his misfortunes, but was happy to have wren nesting company.

Nests we got. We have a lot of bird feeders. And a lot of birds, including house wrens. And a bunch of boats stored outside. That is not a good mix

Something about the underside of the deck plates on a racked canoe is a too-enticing nest cavity for house wrens. Wrens can build a nest in mere days. Worse, they can re-build a nest just as quickly. Worst, sometimes I forget to check and eggs go splat on the windshield after I have driven away with a canoe.

The original nest cavity preventers are nothing more than dollar store mini beach balls. Half-inflated and stuffed into the stems, occluding any potential nest platform. Well, not just “stuffed”; windy days will dislodge them unless secured, so I run a piece of cord through the inflation tube cap and tie that off, poked out through the deck plate drain holes, same as I do to secure some end floatation bags pulled fully into the vee of the stems.

P1280001 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

P1280004 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

Those Dollar Store mini beach balls are old, maybe older than I thought; “Finding Nemo” came out a decade ago. Actually, in 2003. Though dirty they surprisingly still hold air with no leaks, probably because they are hidden from any UV exposure

The beach ball problem lies with “poke a string out through the deck plate drain hole”. It is a PITA groping blindly up underneath the far tip of the stem trying to poke the cord out the drain hole, especially if there is a painter loop through the hull and bungee knotted under the deck plate in the way. In any case my fingers don’t fit all the way to the tip of the stem, so I’m blindly poking away with a doopy cord end held at a distance.

That blind cord poking is no fun even with something less routine, like securing flotation bags with a cord through a tapered-end grommet, but when I forget and storage rack the canoe at home without first installing the nest preventer it is even more problematic. It’s easiest if I remember to plug the beach balls in place while the canoe is still on the truck racks after a trip, and remember to take them out when loading, with the hull at a convenient and exposed work height.

I do remember to take them out before driving away, they are garish visible when tying down. I don’t always remember to reinstall the beach ball preventers once back home, when they are uninstalled invisible waiting in the shop somewhere.

BTW, if you tie off float bags, or anything else held secure in the V of the stem, blindly poking a floppy cord at the drain hole doesn’t need to be that hard. I drill large drain holes, so an egg sack or bit of duff can’t plug them up, but poking cord at even a ½” hole was often overly frustrating. See also fat feeble fingers don’t fit.

You can drop a piece of cord through the drain hole, tie that off to the float bag cord, pull that up through the deck plate hole and untie the excess. A quicker and easier solution is to simply pass (not even tie) the bitter end of the float bag cord through a small loop on the end of a stiff wire guide, and poke that wire through the hole from underneath. A 6” length of coat hanger with a closed loop end helps find the hole without undue frustration.

P1280006 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

P1280009 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

The Mark II cavity preventers were much more efficient to use; some big chunks of scrap ethafoam cut to shape and wedged into the stems. Those are especially convenient when I forget to install the nest cavity plugs before putting the canoe back on the racks; I can just reach overhaed and stuff them in place.

Thick ethafoam wedges, custom cut (and canoe marked, “Wilderness Stern, Wilderness Bow). With a raised portion that seats against the carry handles, those ethafoam blocks, simply stuffed in place, are held securely windproof via the carry handle block, but I only had enough thick ethafoam scrap for make a couple sets.

P1280011 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

P2030031 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

I like the ease and efficiency of those foam blocks, and what I do have left is some 1 ½” thick Pink Panther foamboard and lots of (why 3 partial cans?) spray adhesive. Enough foam board to make a few trial and error design mistakes. And I have ideas for something more universal.

 

[Guest]

Nest Cavity deck plate fillers, Mark III

I made crude guesstimated-size starting with a 5-piece sandwich of foamboard, and cut off the stem excess into a crude V shape. Nice form fitting plug for those nest cavities, but more foamboard and custom vee shaping that I think is really necessary.

P2020024 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

P2020026 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

The cavity fillers do not need to be that long, or even that form fitting. Design-wise I do not want to have to make a custom shape from scratch for each stem cavity filler, or use 5 pieces of foamboard only to cut pieces away as trash. Maybe just a 3-piece sandwich of quarter circles, diminishing in size, strategically offset in the tapered stems and glued together to make a roughly form fitting wedge.

Wow, that idea is hard to describe, and could be a complete fail. Time to cut some experimental foam pieces. As a wild guess, something like this for the middle piece of the foam sandwich should span the length of even my biggest plastic deck plates. Not a totally wild guess; I held the foamboard up against the stem and traced the curve shape first.

P2010012 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

Then a couple of smaller side pieces, spray glue adhered to either side, and set back to accommodate the vee taper in the stems. A true guess at shape and dimensions this time. What the hell, I made a skinnier stem tapered version from smaller scrap foam cut offs. I’m not really gonna know how well these work until I glue the pieces together and test stuff them in the stems.

P2010015 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

P2010017 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

P2020020 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

By golly I think this design will work just fine. The tapered foam sandwich wedges tightly into the stems, the width nicely occludes any nest cavity area, and with the 3-piece design I can adjust and mark the position the outer two pieces fore or aft before gluing up the foamboard sandwich to best accommodate different stem widths and shapes.

P2020022 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

I “think” those foam blocks stuff in tight enough to stay in place even on a windy day. Time will tell. If not I’ll glue on a rectangle of scrap foamboard to fill the carry handle slot, as with the ethafoam blocks.

And I may eventually try a very old school trick. Back in the Grumman days my father made DIY center floatation from glued together Styrofoam. To help prevent the Styrofoam from shedding little granules and keep the horrible squeeeekeeeeksqueeeek down he painted the Styrofoam with latex house paint.

The latex paint should help with UV degredation, even with the nest cavity occluders hidden from sun exposure. Might help keep squirrels from chewing up the foam. Time will tell, it’s a work in progress, and a silly one at that; the half inflated Dollar Store mini beach balls do work very well.

 

[Odyssey]

We have squirrels, lots of them. The only canoe related hijinks they get up to is nibbling and pulling at the poly tarp fabric for high tech nest material. I tarp my canoe as it sits on a rack beneath a towering spruce next to the house, and I don't want sap and pollen coating the canoe. I used to suspect the squirrels but had no proof. "Maybe it's just windy wear and tear?" I thought. Until one spring I looked up and spied a blue poly squirrel nest (drey) consisting of at least 50% tarp threads. Ah ha. I've since replaced the tarp and kept a closer eye on said tarp condition.
Lots of nesting birds but thankfully no starlings.

 

[Guest]

We have squirrels, lots of them. The only canoe related hijinks they get up to is nibbling and pulling at the poly tarp fabric for high tech nest material. I tarp my canoe as it sits on a rack beneath a towering spruce next to the house, and I don't want sap and pollen coating the canoe. I used to suspect the squirrels but had no proof. "Maybe it's just windy wear and tear?" I thought. Until one spring I looked up and spied a blue poly squirrel nest (drey) consisting of at least 50% tarp threads.

High tech, water-proof and long lasting; poly strands are the newest thing in squirrel nest construction materials. The latest issue of Better Dreys and Sleeping Platforms has an article on how to build a gazebo using old grocery store plastic bags as a roof.

Squirrels? You want squirrels? The woods around our house abound with oak and hickory. And we keep bird feeders going; even with the feeders squirrel-proofed the seed dropped on the ground draws a crowd of carolinensis.

A bold crowd, I got tired of schooling them with .22 dust shot every time I opened the front door, and now they just stand their ground and glare back defiantly. May be time to reload the pistol.

I have seen them scurry out of my canoes, but have never seen evidence of squirrel damage, even to the glued in minicel pads. In spring and summer I’d guess they are feasting on wren eggs and fledglings. If so they don’t do a very thorough job of it.

The squirrels worry me more when I see them jump out from the undercarriage or engine compartment of one of our cars; they seem to love the big Ford van. What the hell are you doing in under my truck? G’away with you, ya little b*st*rds.

My aim is not good enough to shoot at the vehicles, even with a scoped pellet rifle.

About tarps, we have a “tarp shed”; an old wooden swing set, a huge thing, overbuilt with 4x4’s and doubled 2x6’s. A seriously sturdy structure, and when the swings, rings and slide became disused we moved it to the edge of the woods, covered with it tarps and use for covered firewood storage. The vee shaped structure in the background.

PB280034 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

We used blue poly tarps at first, and they lasted several years before looking too raggy frayed for the Missus’ backyard aesthetic. I re-tarped that woodshed once, at least 10 years ago, probably closer to 15, using some heavy duty brown tarps. Still going strong, despite some errant firewood stack tumbles busting at the edges, and snow loads sliding down the outside, piled deep.

That thing has worked out far better than planned. The tarp is screwed in place onto the swing set frame with a bunch of 1” fender washers (leftovers from a construction job), and those have certainly helped prevent the tarp from pulling out where screwed down. That part was foreseen.

Unforseen, the slide platform makes a nice deep shelf on one side. Old pallets as a breathable floor. An open doorway in the front, and a closeable doorway flap on the long side, so we can refill firewood from either end and pull out the drier, more aged stuff from the other. It holds 2+ cords if Tetris stacked in a /\.

The tarp shed was repurposed mostly because there was a lot of planning, time, pressure treated lumber & giant bolts/nuts expense in DIYing that uber swing set structure; I wasn’t trashing it just because my sons aged out of playing on swings and slides.

 

[Odyssey]

"The squirrels worry me more when I see them jump out from the undercarriage or engine compartment of one of our cars; they seem to love the big Ford van. What the hell are you doing in under my truck? G’away with you, ya little b*st*rds."

Hush now, don't be too hasty. They might make you an offer. Who knows how many more nuts that could haul. (ha)

"The tarp shed was repurposed mostly because there was a lot of planning, time, pressure treated lumber & giant bolts/nuts expense in DIYing that uber swing set structure; I wasn’t trashing it just because my sons aged out of playing on swings and slides."

I hear ya. I hate doing things twice. Once is hard enough, I don't want to repeat the exercise. I may not overbuild something but I'll be darned if I'll suffer the ignominy of witnessing an underbuilt effort on my part fall into disrepair just because I thought I'd save time and money. Which reminds me I have to rebuild a shed this summer. But on that same thread I built a limber timber structure to keep rain off whatever I stored underneath. In place of walls I used lattice. Looks nice and it works fine. Bicycles spend their season out of the rain under there, while outdoor furniture spends the winter there. My only regret is I wish I'd thought of building it longer.
Much longer. I could've been storing my canoe under that rather than a tarp. Soooo I'm back to the drawing board and planning a Shelter 2.0. Tarps won't be involved.
I've spoiled the squirrels enough already.
And BTW, since when did anyone ever outgrow swings? You just need to build a bigger one.

And you indeed have my commiserations regarding starlings. They're only good for murmurations. (Impossible not to love them for that.) I've pulled too many of them (and their nests) out of chimneys, flues and woodstoves...some still very much alive and startled, leaving a trail of soot-prints as they bounced off walls and curtains on their way out the door. As much as I've cursed them for their species fitness, their plumage is spellbinding, once you clean them up and release them.
Good luck with your battle with nature Mike, I regularly wave the white flag.

 

[Steve in Idaho]

Starlings are the Devil.

Mike - you might want to check the wiring on that van. I read that the wire insulation these days is a derivative of soy or some other vegetation, and rodents like the taste. We have a line of stored locomotives in the rail yard here, and I've spied the local rockchucks (groundhogs, to you easterners) climbing in and out of the undercarriage. They ain't nesting there, but there's a lot of wiring to chew on....

 

[Guest]

Caution--Squirrels (reds at least) eat insulation on house and auto wiring. Locally, one house fire was traced to that, and my wife's car wiring was damaged. harvest them--squirrel is delicious. I have trouble with mud wasps filling up the slots in my wood gunnels every year.

 

[Guest]

Caution--Squirrels (reds at least) eat insulation on house and auto wiring. Locally, one house fire was traced to that, and my wife's car wiring was damaged. harvest them--squirrel is delicious.

We have only Eastern Grey’s, but living in an oak/hickory forest we have a crap load of them. Squirrel meat is OK, and some of ours are chubby enough to be worth dressing. Fried squirrel brains are tasty, if you don’t mind rolling the dice on spongiform encephalopathy. Good with eggs for breakfast.

As a kid our family cabin had a plywood insert for one window with a shooting aperture. I could pick them off under the birdfeeders with a .22 and the report stayed mostly in the cabin, so a squirrel would fall over dead and the others paid no notice. “Yeah, Bob’s taking a sudden dirt nap. . . .Oh, look, there’s a sunflower seed!”

A local farm family loved them some squirrel, and I took them my daily harvest. Except the tails; I cut those off and gave them to our cats. Good lord what a treat; a housecat with a fresh/bloody fluffy squirrel tail is a sight (and fierce possessive growling sound) to behold.

I’m kinda done killing anything bigger than a bug or mouse. I had been popping the squirrels under our feeders with .22 dust shot. Until one unfortunate episode. Usually the dust shot barely fazed them, but I must have hit one square in the gonads. He leapt 3 feet in the air and kept bouncing around that way for a good 30 seconds before dashing under a Hosta.

As he was bouncing around all I could think was “Dude, I’m really sorry about that”.

You might want to check the wiring on that van. I read that the wire insulation these days is a derivative of soy or some other vegetation, and rodents like the taste.

The Ford van is a 2000. Not sure what they used back then, but you’re right, I haven’t inspected the underside up on a lift in too many years. I doubt the carolinensis ate the brake lines on that van, more likely years of winter trips on salt covered roads.

Probably a good thing we don’t have many porcupines going after salt.

 

[Pringles]

I rented a canoe just off the Gunflint Trail a couple of years ago. The lady at the desk told her son to get me a canoe—an not the one with the snake. “THE SNAKE?” My brain said. “Sssssnaaake???” I really said. It turned out that two ladies had rented a canoe a day or two before and as they paddled along, a snake came out from the front bulkhead of the aluminum canoe. The son assured me that I was not getting the canoe with the snake. I hope your fix works on birds AND snakes.

 

[dougd]

Pringles, you've just opened up a canoeing horror story for me! If that were me I'd be doing a Jesus act and been running across the water leaving a rooster tail the whole way! Me and snakes are not a good mix, more on my end, they don't seem to mind me!

 

[Guest]

My wife and her girlfriend rowed our aluminum canoe out on our pond and a snake came out from under the seat. dang! I wasn't there to see it.

 

[Pringles]

Dougd, we might have a contest for putting on the best show. Apparently the two women who had the snake show up were not bothered much, at least that’s the story I got.

 

[Iskweo]

I am not a fan of snakes either. I have recently learned to let them live though. As for starlings, I hear you Brad. My Dad made it his mission on life to shoot as many as possible, even if that meant the 12 ga going off through the kitchen window at 8.00 in the morning. Hell of an alarm clock.

Oak and hickory. Sighhhh what I wouldnt give to have that again. We do have oak here and I love being in the middle of an oak forest in the fall.

The only issue we have had with nesting was hornets. Not a fun time.

Christine

 

[Guest]

As for starlings, I hear you Brad. My Dad made it his mission on life to shoot as many as possible, even if that meant the 12 ga going off through the kitchen window at 8.00 in the morning. Hell of an alarm clock.

Aside from the occasional 1000 bird murmuration passing though we don’t have many startling issues. They are voracious eaters at the feeders when a passing flock settles nearby in the trees; noisy, rude and unattractive invasive.

I have never liked them. Or didn’t until my ornithology instructor gave us an extra point for every dead Starling we brought in. Aced that class.

Oak and hickory. Sighhhh what I wouldnt give to have that again. We do have oak here and I love being in the middle of an oak forest in the fall.

Yeah, that’s all well and good until you need to wear a hardhat while eating dinner out on the back deck.

Hickory nuts always remind me of Euell Gibbons.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XJMIu18I8Y

The painful doink on the head while eating dinner, not so much.

The raffle offering of Gibbons’ Staking the Wild Asparagus brought back memories. I had that book, as did most of my wild-child companions, and we tried everything from cattail shoots to leached and roasted acorns. On the whole I’d rather choke down a couple protein rich grubs or larvae and call it good for the night.

In the late early 70’s I saw Euell Gibbons give a talk on wild foods. In a high school auditorium; a before-her-time PTA helicopter mom besieged Post Grape Nuts with complaints that little Billy was going to poison himself eating leaves and roots, demanding action.

Post Cereals forced Gibbons to give a talk on gathering wild foods at the local high school. He was, from the start, plainly not happy to be there.

He has even less happy when some yahoo (not me, I swear) dropped an empty beer bottle from the upper row of the sloping auditorium floor, and had it roll noisily all the way to the stage.

Gibbons deserves better than for that to be my lasting vision of him, but whadda ya gonna do with memories.

 

[Pringles]

I love an oak-hickory climax forest. I’ve never gotten hit on the head with one, or any other body part for that matter. But the trees are gorgeous. We have neither where I live now, and I miss them, and white pines and maples and birch (from where I lived in Michigan) and sassafrass and cypress (from where I lived in Kentucky) and sweetgums and tulip trees (from where I lived in Tennessee). I don’t think I’ll ever miss the locusts or cottonwoods of where I live now, but the lodgepole pines in Yellowstone, yup. The botany is part of why I like to drive to places instead of fly. If you fly, you get off the plane and are dumped into a new environment. If you drive, you can see how the land changed to change the ecosystems. I don’t know that much about botany, but I usually make new plant-friends, and then when I move, I miss them. Oh, and dogwoods blooming in the forest in the spring... and redbuds and holly and... .

Sorry for the thread drift. Your idea and execution for a nest barrier seem great. I hope it works for you to keep birds out, but I also hope it keeps the snakes out.