Whirlybird Solutions Movie Night at the Terrace

Thank you to everyone who attended our movie night at The Terrace Theater on March 26, 2009, and a special thanks goes to everyone who made a donation to Save the Light (www.savethelight.org). We also thank the Terrace Theater for showing “The Birds” and giving away free tickets at our event. We look forward to the Terrace Theater’s Alfred Hitchcock movie festival this summer! Finally, congratulations to the lucky raffle winners who won free Whirlybird Repellers and tickets to the Terrace Theater!

The Terrace Theater is Going to the Birds

The Post and Courier – March 2009 – To market its bird repellent device, Charleston-based WhirlyBird Solutions will sponsor an admission-free movie night on March 26, with showings of Alfred Hitchcock’s classic “The Birds” at 6:15 p.m. and 8:45 p.m. and drawings for free devices. Donations will be accepted to benefit Save the Light, stewards of the Morris Island Lighthouse.

The WhirlyBird Repeller, a turbine shaped like a bird of prey, spins and wobbles in the wind and reflects light on surrounding surfaces. The device’s appearance, sound, vibration and reflections scares birds away, its marketers said.

The Coast Guard has successfully tested the device on navigational aids and it has been used for three seasons by Irvin House Vineyards on Wadmalaw Island, according to Rob Turkewitz of WhirlyBird Solutions.

Multiplastics in Mount Pleasant makes most of the parts, and South Carolina Vocational Rehabilitation assembles and packages the device.

‘The Birds’ have met their match

By Ken Burger, The Post and Courier, March 26, 2009  – If you really want to know if a product works, talk to the man who uses it. That’s why I went straight to Johnny Ackerman, the man who was varnishing Fred Wichmann’s 42-foot boat on the Stono River. “No bird poop on the boat,” Johnny said with a smile. “I’m the one who has to keep it clean. So I tell you, it works.” Rob Turkewitz couldn’t ask for a better endorsement for his new invention, WhirlyBird Repeller, a plastic, spinning, whizzing, wobbling contraption designed to keep birds away from your dock. Turkewitz, a Charleston attorney, first envisioned the product with a friend as they fought the endless battle of bird poop on their dock along the Intracoastal Waterway. They started by cutting up a plastic soda bottle, letting the wings spin in the breeze to scare off the birds. They gradually refined the product until they came up with the WhirlyBird. Wichmann, a 79-year-old sailor on Charleston’s waterways, has had two of the gizmos on his dock for three years and says the wind-blown whatchamacallits work. “Gulls, pelicans, seabirds, they all poop on somebody else’s dock now,” Wichmann said, pointing up and down the waterway.

The Wobble
To date, Turkewitz has sold about 500 of the instruments on the Internet (whirlybirdrepeller.com) and received some glowing reports from users, including the U.S. Coast Guard, which has tested the product on its navigational aids. While birds are part of the natural environment along the coast, they can be a nuisance. People have tried everything from noise makers to fake owls and snakes to banging pots and pans to keep them away. So it’s interesting to see this plastic problem solver at work, spinning in the afternoon breeze, hardly noticeable. During the course of development, Turkewitz said he’s learned that the secret is twofold. One, the Whirlybird is designed to reflect light, which causes sporadic flashes that frighten the birds. And, he says, it’s the way the Whirlybird is mounted so that it wobbles a bit when spinning. “It’s definitely the wobble,” he said. “We don’t always know why things work, but it works.”

Sweet Spot
Produced locally, WhirlyBird is an ingeniously simple product that’s environmentally friendly and sells for about $50. It’s also been tested by Jim Irvin, owner of Irvin-House Vineyards on Wadmalaw Island. He said he tried shotguns, kites and scarecrows but still had problems with foraging birds when his muscadine grapes were ripening. “After installation of the WhirlyBirds, foraging came to an abrupt end,” he said, adding that the result was a 20 percent greater yield. After harvesting the grapes, he removed the devices and the birds returned to clean up the bad and leftover fruit. Turkewitz said there have been occasions where the product wasn’t successful, mainly due to lack of breeze or improper mounting. “You have to experiment with it a little,” he said. “There’s a sweet spot where it will work best for the environment. Also, for some reason, it doesn’t work for ducks.” Things are going so well, in fact, Turkewitz is holding a promotional event tonight at the Terrace Theatre on James Island where patrons can get free admission to see, what else, Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller, “The Birds.”

Reach Ken Burger at kburger@postandcourier.com or (843) 937-5598. To read previous columns, go to postandcourier.com/burger/.

South Carolina Business Review ETV Interview

Listen to Mike Switzer of ETV interview Rob Turkewitz and Bud Doty about the amazing WhirlyBird Repeller.

Whirly Bird Anti-fowlant – Practical Sailor

Practical Sailor – April 2008

Every boat owner sooner or later becomes familiar with the degrading effects of the maritime environment. Whether they’re barnacles along the waterline, metal fittings rusting on deck, or galvanic corrosion beneath the water, ultimately we all learn to contend with such realities. But one damaging element in the maritime environment often overlooked is the destructive power of bird feces.

Guano, bird poop, white death–whatever you call it–is a strong corrosive. Bird feces naturally contain some of the most acidic substances: ammonia, uric, phosphoric, oxalic, and carbonic acids, as well as salt. Fecal matter from birds can cause crazing in Lexan hatches, accelerate the degradation of stitching in awnings, and break down the protective properties of wax. And yes, it’s also unsightly and unhealthy

The good news is that there are numerous devices on the market intended to dissuade birds from roosting on and fouling your decks or spars. This group comprises a broad range of sizes and styles from the ubiquitous plastic owl to the antenna-like, spider-style Daddy Long Legs.

In our most recent review of bird repellents, which appeared in the May 15, 1999 and Feb. 1, 2000 issues, Practical Sailor testers concluded that “there is no magic solution for getting rid of birds…,” but “for effective, long-term deterrents, think mechanical barriers.” Among the best mechanical barriers were the Shoo in a Sock (a series of brightly colored flags strung together) and the Gull Sweep (still on the market).

We’re revisiting the realm of bird deterrents and amassing a collection of such devices for a long-term test. In the interim, we wanted to introduce readers to a new product that merits attention because it claims to repel birds through a constantly changing combination of motion, reflections, sound, and vibrations, which, according to its inventors, prevent birds from becoming acclimated to its presence.

The Whirly Bird
The Whirly Bird Repeller was conceived by two boating enthusiasts primarily to keep avian invaders off their home docks. The two inventors—Rob Turkewitz and Bud Doty—both live on the water in Charleston, S.C. After a lack of success in protecting their docks, they developed the Whirly Bird Repeller. This device evolved from a series of prototypes that began with an inverted plastic juice bottle with “wings” cut out of the sides so that the least bit of wind would cause the bottle—or what Turkewitz calls the “turbine”—to rotate.

The 18-ounce Whirly Bird, which sells for $40, comes assembled in a compact box (12 by 6 by 6 inches).

The “turbine” is made of clear, ultraviolet light-resistant plastic, but the axle/post and extension are made of PVC, which is subject to UV-degradation. The turbine is mounted to a PVC cap with bushings that allow it to spin and wobble with ease. The product comes with a mounting base made of King Starboard. Reflective tape is adhered to post inside the bottle, and small “eyes” are fastened near the top of the Whirly Bird to give it the impression of a bird of prey. When wind propels the bottle, it rotates off axis, thereby creating sounds and vibrations as the neck of the bottle knocks against the post.

Does it all work? We’ll be able to answer that question more definitively after testing the product (along with several others) for a period of months, but Turkewitz told us that the Whirly Bird endured a 14-month test conducted in conjunction with the U.S. Coast Guard’s National Aids to Navigation School. The school placed Whirly Bird Repellers on several of its solar-powered aids to navigation along the Intracoastal Waterway. Before this test, excessive amounts of bird guano accumulated on the solar panels, causing frequent outages, but the Whirly Bird kept birds away and the lights working. The device, Turkewitz said, has also been used successfully by a South Carolina winery to increase crop yield by 20 percent.