Coastal North Carolina neighborhood getting overrun by ducks

NEW BERN, N.C. — A neighborhood near the coast of North Carolina has been taken over by ducks, WCTI reports.

Skip Canady has owned his home in New Bern for eight years. He told WCTI he and his neighbors in Surry Downs are frustrated with ducks that are destroying their properties. He said the ducks have overpopulated, and as their number has grown, so have the messes they’ve left in their wake.

“One clutch can give you 23 eggs,” Canady told WCTI. “That’s a lot of ducks every year, as you can see, we have them over here. We not only have to battle with the ducks, we have to battle with the geese. They walk up and down the street and they poop everywhere, mess your yard up. So we have to get some help here.”

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Canady said his neighborhood has two retention ponds. He said a previous neighbor dropped Muscovy ducks off at one of them.

He said some of his neighbors don’t mind the ducks and see them as pets -- but he doesn’t.

“We can’t sit at our pond anymore, because they ate all of the grass,” he said. “It smells, it stinks on hot days when you walk. It’s not a good thing.”

WCTI spoke with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, who said there isn’t much they can do.

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“We don’t allow relocation for those issues, because if it’s an issue for somebody there, it’s going to be an issue wherever they are moved to,” said Greg Batts, a biologist with North Carolina Wildlife. “So, they have to be euthanized if they are captured.”

Batts did share a few tips for decreasing the ducks’ population.

“Habitat manipulation. Birds like to go from short grass into the water, and so you could grow grass around the water. If they see tall grass, it’s a deterrent keeping them from going out of the water,” he suggested. “There are deterrents that you can spray on your grass. Most of them are a type of grape extract. It makes the grass taste nasty to the birds so they don’t want to eat the grass.”

Canady told WCTI he has thought about gathering the ducks and taking them to a farm that wants them.

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