[danallxt]

Some bird crap can really raise hell with the clearcoat. Let me provide a personal example.

Recently I was on a trip to the central/northern coastal area of Oregon, overnited in a coastal motel. I parked my new M240x in a portion of the lot removed from other cars (avoiding door dings). Next morning I find the car (hood and roof) peppered with sea gull bird shit, no other cars had bird shit on em. I've been told birds will target an object to shit on during a fly by for fun. (i know I would if I was a bird). Some of it was fairly crusty and I got a bottle of water and cloth to remove the big blobs. Then I got another bottle and rinsed the hood and thought “good enough”.

After I got back from the trip I hand washed the very dirty car and noticed the hood/roof area had very noticeable cloudy like water spots. These actually were dissolved bird crap/water spots. No problem I thought, so I rewashed, no luck, still there. Tried hand wax, nope, hand polish, nope, mild glaze polish with DA polisher and white pad, no luck, Mequirers 205 with white pad, kinda helped, I had to go to the orange pad and use noticeable DA force to remove the bird shit stains. Frankly I was surprised how tenacious these stains were, they obviously were embedded into the clear coat. I thought I had rinsed it well, but obviously just the remaining dissolved bird crap in the water remaining on the hood was enough to embed into the clear.

What I would do differently would be (after scrubbing and lightly rinsing the crap off) to get a bottle of water with a bit of motel shampoo or soap and soap and wash the entire panel down, rinse thoroughly, and then wipe dry the entire panel. I was reluctant to wipe the panel/hood dry as it was pretty dirty from my trip as I had got caught driving in rain leaving the hood pretty dirty. Not realizing how aggressive that crap can be I only lightly rinsed the hood and just let dry on its own.

Perhaps not all bird shit is that toxic to clearcoat finishes, but for those without garages you may want to not leave bird crap on your car very long. I did have a quality spray ceramic finish on the car.

[Burrcold]

This is where a proper ceramic coating (not ceramic spray) really is appreciated.

[JSaid]

^this

[aguywalksintoabar]

Hair dryer method worked for me. Worth looking into.
Or some Gyeon Bug and Tar remover.

[peelerec]

The only additional value I can add besides what others have said (ceramic or graphene coating is a must) is proper maintenance of coatings definitely helps remove bird droppings and prevents paint damage. I recently had tree sap land on my hood and was easily able to remove it using a carnuba based wax and a light clay bar + microfiber. It was easy to remove simply because of the ceramic coating on my vehicle.