How to deter wekas poking around in my garden?

without harming them. They love scratching around the pea-straw and bark on my gardens and I have a mess to clean up most mornings. I won't use traps or anything to hurt them, I'd just like to frighten them off somehow. I have two dogs but it's not practical to leave them outside as we don't have a fenced property. Thanks for any suggestions.

Put your dogs on overhead running wires so they can patrol the area without getting tangled.
Many years ago at Mawheraiti (sth of Reefton )my farm dog was tied on a wire outside my garden and killed 10-12 wekas a night for about 10 days .
They dont seem to get the message easily.

Weka = nosy bird - put some interesting things for them to inspect round about outside your section.

wtf weka are protected everywhere

gosh, I haven't even seen a weka since the mid 80s.scatter small pieces of tinfoil in an area away from your garden - they love picking them all up and stashing them.Anyone who kills them because of a garden needs to turn the barrel on themselves :(

Sad :(

at best poor taste of a wind up ,I hope no one would be so ignorant and also there would not be so many wekas in one area

I think they are the coolist birds around, once you get to know their ways
I have a resident pair and enjoy watching them raise their offspring and all the effort they put in to it
also no more garden snails etc here

good on you hokispca for trying to find nice ways of detering them , unfortunatley there are few solutions
as you know wekas can't fly but they can jump up to 700 mm high, so maybe a 1 metre high netting fence would do the trick, but if its for your flower gardens and not a vegie garden, you may not deem it suitable.
my neighbour blasts away with his shotgun to scare them away as he has only sheep netting around his vegi gardens,

perhaps an air horn might work ( canister type, like a spray can)
but myself , I like having them around, the male one taps on my door at 6:15 every morning for a feed (female turns up once its dark) , and when the eggs have hatched he makes a little kazzo sounding noise , then I know to chuck down a few bits of food instead of hand feeding him, and he gathers the bits up in his beak and hurtles off at full speed to feed the chicks, and at about three weeks onwards , he brings the whole family down
perhaps doc might relocate them if they are causing too much trouble, but I doubt it and others will probably turn up to take their place.

change to pebble gardens !

Thanks everyone for your comments.I love all animals so would never dream of harming the wekas. I love them in my garden but it can be a problem having to tidy it all the time. I might try putting some food scraps out around the garden in the hope they'll eat them and not dig for worms and bugs.but if it doesn't work I'll just have to live with it.lol

They are good eating according to the Chatham Islanders I know.

yes but as they are introduced and in abundance, they are not protected in the chatham's as they are in nz