My chickens have been on lockdown in their coop for about a week.
Because…
Stoopid wild birds have discovered & are using it as a Free Lunch & Spa.
Eating the feed & fouling the water IF! they leave any water in the heated bowl 
I’m not worried about birdflu, but I’m not feeding these freeloaders.
I’ve read about shiny objects being a deterrent & today sacrificed some old CDs (apologies to Pink, Sweet Honey in the Rock & Rory Black 
).
Has anyone had success with this method?
My GET OUT!!! hung in the coop doorway to the fenced yard:
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The plastic owl I have hanging in my barn seems to deter most birds.
Do you have an option to put a roof of some sort on your outside area (netting or such)? That might keep the birds out.
Are they coming inside to feast? Or is your stuff out in the run? If they’re coming inside, I’d just put a tarp over all but the lowest 3-4 feet. The chickens will walk in, but the birds won’t. Use a tarp with grommets and a couple carabiners, so you can unclip it to easily walk in/out when cleaning and such.
@trubandloki I’ll look for an owl.
So far my scareCD seems to be helping.
Just a few freeloaders when I closed the coop yesterday. Water wasn’t fouled, only the usual amount of feed eaten & hens got to spend the day in their yard.
Yard is “roofed” with crisscrossed baling twine, put up to deter hawks. I’d read they see the pattern as solid & so far it’s been effective for the 10+yrs it’s been up. I replace worn strands every couple years.
I used deer netting in the past & it didn’t stand up to snowload.
@endlessclimb feed & water are inside the coop.
If the wilds don’t go away when weather warms up & there’s their natural food outside, I might see if I can rig up at least a partial blockade at the coop door to the yard.
I doubt the big Owl will work as I had one attached to peak of a barn when I moved here and a small bird pecked a hole in it and
Made a nest. Some bird raised babies inside for several years til a hurricane blew it down
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Do you have any bird feeders or water available elsewhere on your property?
If not it might be easier to make another area more attractive to them to lure them away than try to block them out of the coop.
It’s sort of along the lines of when people have squirrels going after their tomatoes. It’s usually during dry weather and the squirrels are going after the tomatoes for water. If they set out some water for the squirrels they stop bothering the tomatoes.
Of course it could backfire and you wind up with even more birds everywhere. 
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I did have feeders until this Winter.
Both got a lot of traffic.
One in the backyard, maybe 25’ from the coop.
Another hung in a tree in my side yard.
Through inertia, I never got around to keeping either filled. 
If we weren’t facing a snowstorm this afternoon through tomorrow, I’d fill both & see if that helped.
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I put the plastic owl in the barn and it isn’t working. Sparrows are determined to be amongst my chickens. I spent a pretty penny for the good netting only to find that they can (and will) hop right through it. Now to figure out how to get the crappy teeny tiny bird netting up over the top of the expensive useless 2" netting. I’m beyond irritated.
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My master’s thesis was on wildlife damage management! The most effective way to successfully mitigate issues with wildlife is preventing access to the area. Maybe putting up a chicken wire or netting roof over your enclosure so the birds can’t gain access to it? Birds have extremely well-developed visual systems and will habituate very quickly to visual deterrents like shiny moving stuff or predator effigies. If you’re going the deterrent route, auditory deterrents are much more effective on birds, though not as accessible for a homeowner - can’t imagine you or your chickens would be okay with a motion activated noisemaker going off
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OMG that’s hysterical. If that’s not a big f u i don’t know what is! LOL
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UPDATE:
The CDs on a string appear to be working.
The past few days, no Interlopers & today maybe 3 flew out when I went to close the coop.
Hens & rooster will be kept in the next 3 days as we’re due for single digit daytime temps w/below zero windchills 
I am sooooo ready for Spring! 
On a Happy Note:
3 Eggs today!!!
My August chicks are going into production & eggs are getting near the expected L&XL size.
Blue egg is a Small, green ones 
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I follow a woman in Wales and the government there has ordered all flocks to be confined free of pests. She constructed an outdoor area that allowed for a lot of natural light and interesting features like a dust pit and an artificial hedge of clippings around the base of the fence Fine screening and material sealed out the interlopers. It was a lot of work for 4 or 5 hens, but she is not a stranger to doing property projects like this.
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My problem is it’s virtually impossible to sparrow-proof my old cattle barn. And if I really managed it, it would probably make things more difficult for the barn kitty. I really thought I had solved it by covering the pens with netting ~sigh~ Honestly I should just order a new, smaller-holed netting rather than trying to figure out how to get smaller netting on top of the 2". But it seems so wasteful, having already spent the money once.
