Around the Patch: Fowl business

When you’re an airplane owner whose baby has to be tied down outside, you feel a sense of dread at bird season. In the spring, birds are looking for places to nest. Many seem to think that a parked airplane would make a good condo. Unfortunately, airplanes offer lots of openings that are attractive to nesting birds.

I opened up the cowling on the right side to spy a few stray twigs and wisps of grass. I cleared those out easily, but something told me to open up the left side of the cowling.

Wow.

Leaves, grass, twigs, and bits of fabric and paper were crammed in the engine compartment. Cowl plugs weren’t stopping the birds—they were going up under the cowling through the opening where the nosewheel strut is. I put a rubber snake on the pavement just behind the nosewheel.

Thus was born a daily routine: Stop at the airport, go out to the airplane, open up the cowling, clean out the nest-in-progress. (The rubber snake didn’t intimidate the birds.)

Thus was born a daily routine: Stop at the airport, go out to the airplane, open the cowling, clean out the nest-in-progress.After three days, I thought surely the intruders would give up. “At this time of year, they’re persistent [expletives],” a pilot friend said. Sure enough, on days four and five I had to clean out even more nesting than the previous days. Luckily my airplane’s engine compartment can be opened from both sides, and my hands are small.

It became a test of wills. After day five, I plugged the bottom of the cowling with a towel. That didn’t stop them. After day six, I grabbed the old, beat-down pillow I’d been using as a seat cushion and shoved that up under the cowling into the engine compartment. I used the towel to fill in the spaces around it. Nope.

I had an idea that I would stuff towels in the engine compartment itself around the area where the birds were trying to build a nest—underneath the oil filter and against the firewall. I returned two days later to find that the birds had managed to drag more nesting materials into the airplane, but now the branches and wisps and bits of paper were harder to clean out because they were sandwiched around the supposed blockade.

As usual, pilot friends were full of suggestions, including the not-very-helpful ideas to “get a cat,” and “ground the airplane until the fledglings are hatched.”

One morning I arrived less than a day after having cleaned out the previous mess to see that the birds had managed to drag in enough bedding to lay two tiny blue eggs. When I yanked out the nesting, the eggs fell to the ground and broke. I hoped the birds would realize that this plan wasn’t working out for them. Apparently that’s not how their little brains are wired. Another nest-in-the-making was waiting for me the very next day.

After weeks of cleaning out nests and wiping off bird excrement, I saw another AOPA colleague who had been fighting the same fight for his Piper Cherokee, also parked outside at our airport. He showed me a roll of black fiberglass window screen, which he had cut into squares and used to plug up the holes under the cowling, and then gave me the remainder of the roll. Eureka! And thanks, Fred.

I think the battle is over for the season. It was a very long six weeks, and I don’t look forward to next year’s skirmish.

Part of me empathizes with the birds. Everybody wants a snug place to build a nest. But please—not in my airplane.

Email Technical Editor Jill Tallman at [email protected]; Twitter: @jtallman1959.