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

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!"

For years, we've been having an on-going war of epic proportions with barn swallows. If we had a much bigger porch, I'd just let them nest. But our porch is not that big and we like to sit out there to enjoy the early mornings and late evenings. A few years ago, we added a roll up shade to the porch, which has become the residence of choice for these free loaders. They've done the same in yhe rear porch and ruined our shades with poop and mud. And before we installed the shades, they'd try to nest on our security cameras. We would remove their muddy mess as soon as we would realize they'd be nesting, all the way with yhem flying over our heads. Even trying to poke on us. We tried everything we could think of in the past, from windchimes to crazy dances making noises and using broom as if we were juggling a baton during the annual Thanksgiving Parade in downtown. Nothing would deter them. This year, we decided to try a decoy. Found this one here on Amazon. I wasn't willing to spend big bucks with these birds that seem seem be able to overcome anything, even bird repellents. The decoy has been out on the porch now for two days and after we removed every single vestige of their efforts at building their nest. As soon as we ser it on one of the porch benches, a swallow darted to their spot on the rolled-up shade, only to take off faster than what it try to outrun us. We haven't seen seen come back again. We do make a point of going into their and move the decoy to a different spot in yhe porch every few hours and we bring it inside at night. And so far, it's working! No more mud or bird poop on our benches, chairs, tables, window frames, shutters, ir porch floor. We'll keep monitoring and come back yo update this review, if and as needed.I didn't give it 5 stars because I'm not sure how much it will last. It seems cheaply made. You can't use water to weigh it down. You have to use sand or small rocks or pebbles. And I'm not sure how long the paint will last of exposed to the sun for too long. And our porch gets a lot of sunshine from around noon until like 6 or 7 PM. For how cheap it looks like, it seems a bit pricey. Either way, it's working so far. Not even sparrows are coming to our porch now and I have yet to see a mourning Dove, too. If you desperate to reclaim part of your house or yard to similar birds, I'd say give it a try. Nothing else worked for us in the past. By the way, ni eggs or birds were harmed in the epic battle of years with them. We love birds and we are avid birdwatchers. But enough is enough.

This hawk is doing it's job as of right now!! We have of a lot of geese in my subdivision and they are all over the place doing their business:( They haven't made their way down to my house yet so I'm trying to prevent them from coming to my yard and sidewalk. So far so good!

The paint peeled immediately. I'll have to repaint 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.

looks great ..fill with sand

thank you

It might be nice if it had colors like the listing. The one I got goes from grey to dark grey.