Bad internet advice #1 - Hang shiny objects, they scare birds

Whenever I read some forum, I see something like "I heard.." or "What you should do is.."  Unfortunately, it's common where "I tried this and it worked.." isn't so much.

One piece of "internet expert" advice I tried, was hanging shiny objects from my chicken coop in order to scare the birds away, so that they wouldn't share the chicken feed.  So I dug out several old CDs that were of no value, and hung them from the corners of the coop.

Big mistake!

Where before only small sparrows flocked to the chicken feed, suddenly black birds (starlings?) and magpies were coming, attracted by the shinyness.    I wish I had taken a picture.  Yes, they shine and sparkle - you can see them glinting better from the distance than from where I took the picture, like the far telephone lines in the back of the photo above.

What a shockingly bad piece of internet advice!  I doubt there's anyone out there who does this and actually goes around recommending it.  I suspect it was created and  perpetuated by the "internet experts".