Corner Buster: How Can The Plastic Chain be More Effective?

Something seems to be wrong about the installation of "corner buster" at Carey Island BH.

I wanted to improve the shape of those nests at the old BH at Carey Island.

About 45 days ago I arranged the installation of plastic chains at about 40 locations.

The job consisted of identifying the right locations and remove the nests.

Once removed the plastic chains were installed to make those birds moved to its sides.

Unfortunately after 45 days the number of birds returning to the same spot was less than 15%.

The caretaker and the BH owner wanted my full explanations why what was predicted is not happening?

I cannot find a suitable answer unless I came over to take a look at the installations.

Today inspected the affect BH and after analysing the chains installations I think there are a few issues that can be the possible reasons:

1) Out of the 40 pieces installed only about 5-10 that shows some sign of new nests being erected. The rest seems to be abandoned by the birds.

2) One have to understand that the corner buster idea was mainly used on 90* corners that are not covered with wood covers.

3) As for BH already installed with corner covers usually made of wood the nest will be located something like this skech:

4) With the installation of plastic chains the nest should move to either the left or right sides of the chain like this sketch:

5) However in this Carey Island BH the birds seems to be a bit annoyed with the chain and they refused to return to the same location.

6) There might be many reasons why but I am of the opinion 45 days might not be long enough. They might have returned to the same location but took a much longer time to decide to move to the side of move to another location.

7) There is also a very strong possibility that they still wanted to try to find ways to out smart the chain. There were two or three spots where they go underneath the chain and erect their new nests.

My recommendations are as follows:

a) We need to give them more time and see the progress.

b) During today's visit I asked the worker who came along to spray super pheromone on both side of all the chains. I assumed that the super pheromone will stimulate them to quickly start building their nests at either the left of the right sides.

c) There is something not right with the situation. My thinking was that if all those tests conducted on corners without any corner covers are giving a 95% success rate then why don't we remove all those corner covers?

d) Another method which was not tested is to perhaps install a fake nest one on the left and one of the right so that we assist the couple to move.

The above ideas might need to be evaluated deeper.

We have no answer right now.

The more we carry out the necessary test the better will our chance to find the right solution.