Living with pigeons
When pigeon flocks grow too large,
use these humane methods to control their numbers
From a pigeon’s perspective, city
living can’t be beat. Food and water are readily available. Predators are rare.
Plus, there’s plenty of free housing. Pigeons find our window ledges, rooftops,
bridges, and warehouses to be ideal substitutes for the natural ledges in cliff
sides that they have always used as roosting, nesting, and sheltering sites.
When flocks grow too large and
become a nuisance, killing the birds is often the first plan of action. But
killing pigeons doesn't work, and there are better, non-lethal ways to fix a
pigeon problem.
Three
steps to humanely solve a pigeon problem
You may just need one or a
combination of all three techniques, depending on the size of the pigeon
population you're dealing with.
Stop
feeding the pigeons (intentionally or not)
Most conflicts with pigeons can be
tied at one point or another to feeding, intentionally or otherwise.
Pigeons get fed plenty of handouts
and garbage, but there are also well-intentioned pigeon lovers who regularly
feed the birds. This does the pigeons more harm than good as the pigeons begin
to gather in large numbers, often leading to inhumane and ineffective attempts
to reduce their numbers.
When such troubles arise, the best
thing for the birds is to reduce feeding gradually over several weeks. The
flock will gradually disperse until the remaining number of birds matches what
the area can naturally support.
Unintentional
food sources
Even when not feeding on purpose, we
humans are messy, leaving leftovers and dropped crumbs everywhere. Pigeons hang
around town squares, public parks, and other trafficked areas to help
themselves to what we leave behind, especially when convenient roosting and
nesting sites are nearby. To discourage pigeons from gathering, food
attractants need to be cleaned up regularly.
In suburban neighborhoods, too,
homeowners may mistakenly feed pigeons or they may be providing food for
pigeons inadvertently when feeding their backyard birds by tossing seed on the
ground, rather than putting it in birdfeeders. To discourage pigeons visiting
your yard, change the type, amount, and timing of feeding. If most of the
pigeons fail to move elsewhere, you’ll need to stop feeding all birds for a
couple weeks. (Don't worry; the birds won't starve.) When you resume feeding,
only put out seed in birdfeeders and keep the ground below them cleaned up.
Prevent
roosting and nesting
Pigeons look for flat surfaces for
roosting and nesting. Encourage them to do these things elsewhere by making
flat surfaces unavailable to them. With the correct application of the right
product, roosting structures can be rendered virtually pigeon-free.
There are a variety of devices that
can be used to change flat nesting spots into inaccessible spaces and prevent
pigeons from roosting in areas where they’re not wanted.
NEVER use polybutylene gel. Sticky gel repellents made from polybutene can harm all
birds and any animal that comes in contact with it. The HSUS strongly
recommends that these dangerous repellents be avoided at all costs. The
feathers of any bird who comes into contact with the dense, sticky gel will
become damaged, interfering with their ability to fly and to stay
water-proofed.
These gel repellents are not
selective. Other birds are likely to land on the gel, get stuck, and die a slow
death. The polybutene gels are particularly harmful to smaller species.
Limit
flock size with pigeon birth control
As year-round nesters, a pair of
pigeons can raise a dozen or more young each year. If pigeons have plenty of
food and space, their numbers can quickly increase. Fortunately, a bird
contraceptive is available that limits growth of pigeon flocks.
Ovocontrol bird food is "birth
control" for pigeons. Innolytics, LLC
Known as OvoControl,
pigeon contraception comes in the form of a kibble-type food, which causes
birds who eat it regularly to lay eggs that fail to develop. In March 2010,
OvoControl received landmark general-use approval by the Environmental
Protection Agency.
Combined with exclusion and other
humane measures to discourage roosting and nesting, OvoControl effectively
reduces hatching rates in pigeons, thereby limiting flock sizes and diminishing
problems associated with large numbers of pigeons.
Pigeon
droppings and public health
Disease risk from pigeon droppings
is often used to justify killing pigeons, but fresh bird droppings have not
been shown to present a health risk.
People may fear that pigeons roosting
or nesting nearby, or more specifically the droppings that accompany such
sites, are a health threat. These fears usually focus on histoplasmosis, a
fungus that grows in dropping-enriched soil, and on diseases caused by
Cryptococcus and Salmonella. However, there
is little evidence linking pigeons directly to human infections.
According to the Centers for Disease
Control, fresh bird droppings on surfaces such as sidewalks and windowsills
have not been shown to present a health risk.. People should avoid contact with
any animal droppings, of course, and ordinary good hygiene, such as washing
hands and leaving shoes at the door, are adequate prevention if you
accidentally come into contact with animal droppings.
Why
killing pigeons doesn't work
Killing, by any means, isn’t just
cruel; it fails to solve the root cause of the problem, leading to an endless
cycle of killing. Any poisons used to kill pigeons is overall ineffective.
Taking a
small subset out of the population really doesn’t accomplish much other than
opening up niche space for other birds to fill. The end result of the use of
lethal pigeon poisons is an endless cycle of unnecessary killing.