to want to slap pigeon lady

[jollygoose]

The neighbour next but one feeds the pigeons and seagulls daily, leaving out a large tray of food all day. Next door had an infestation of them in the roof and had pest controllers to evict them. Since then they have taken up residence on our pitched roof and crap all over the car and the drive. I will try and get some spikes up there to stop them but it is very high up.
If anybody has any ideas of how to get rid I would be grateful.

I would’ve been on to Environmental Health two weeks in frankly. I have a bird phobia and this would put the shitters up me, and that’s before you think about the poo-staining on your car and roof. Pigeon poop is corrosive and really bad for your paintwork. Even ignoring my phobia, it’s really anti-social towards your very immediate neighbours unless they also love birds.

I work in the city centre and two years back we started getting a lot of seagulls pestering people during nesting-season. So the posh (partially enclosed) shopping centre has started hiring a hawk man who coming in to scare them off and stop them nesting in and around there. I would ambling through every Tuesday morning and walk around a corner and this massive hawk would be flapping its wings like mad. As I hate seagulls this is one bird I’m quite happy to see on a regular basis.

I did once see a seagull eating a pigeon beside the Albert Clock. It wasn't quite dead so it started stabbing it with its beak to finish it off.

Haha look at the advert it has given me

Craic I've seen a seagull trying to desperately eat a pigeon too outside Liverpool Street Station! Pigeon wasn't even close to being dead either and did actually manage to get away.

Pigeon poo is a health hazard and can cause all sorts of lung issues if allowed to build up.

Our Tesco has a screeching noise to deter other the little birds that shit all over the trolleys.

Get one of those, leave it running all day when you are out. I'm sure that's less antisocial that what she is doing

We once had some kind of bird of prey flying around where we lived, maybe someone had hired it I'm not sure. But it killed 2 pigeons dead right in front of us. Just heard a swoosh and a thump, then a pigeon just dropped out of the sky and landed metres away from us, then the same again a minute later. The bird of prey never came back and ate them.

we hired a hawk

Impressed.

I use a large London mainline station and they have a man with a hawk in there every so often to discourage the pigeons from roosting in the roof. Adds a bit of joy to my commute.

I've been in a London station too when a hawk does its fly about. Brilliant to see!

Being a RentaHawk must be an awesome gig for a hawk.

Nice safe place to live, all the pigeons you can eat and you get to fly around being awesome.

Where I used to work (a soulless City development) we used to have a hawk man come with a bird the size of an emu on his arm to seek and destroy, well I'm not sure what exactly. Maybe escaping employees? Rogue traders?

I'm trying to remember which station it was, but can't atm. I know that the times the hawk did its fly around was advertised in the station, possibly to alert any travelling pirate with parrot to shove it in his kitbag?

I should offer my cat for rent. My garden currently looks like a pigeon has exploded in it.

Our swimming pool has pigeons so hard they aren't scared of hawks

Surprised the hawks eat the pigeons really, ours used to turn its beak up - not surprising really as the diseases they carry can be harmful to hawks, ours seemed to have a sixth sense! Much preferred pheasant, the posh little thing.

Would love to be a hawkman though, what fun!

I've remembered where they fly a hawk twice a day, it's in the bus station booking hall at Heathrow.

I think you want this

No, sorry, that explained the red-in-beak-and-claw nature of the average hawk.

Hawk hire here, I think : www.hawkforce.co.uk

TheCraicDealer I am glad it is not just me who is a bit phobic about birds. Pigeons are bad enough but I think those massive herring gulls are absolutely terrifying. I could never live in a coastal town where they are a real nuisance.

This is the sort of story that is the stuff of nightmares to me Chihuahua killed by seagulls

How the hell do they end up as protected species? They are a god awful nuisance and it is everyone else who needs protecting against the gulls!!

"Hired a hawk" - brilliant

not wanting to be goady..... but how is hunting with a hawk, different to the other type of hunting that gets people frothing yet the hawk seems to be perfectly acceptable?

My next door neighbour chucks shit tonnes of bread into the ginnel for the fucking pigeons. Every fucking day

YANBU

Because pigeon poop is rotten and really, really harmful to buildings. In the city where I work we have a lot of very ornate Victorian stone facades which are gradually eroded by bird crap. You can only do so much with netting before you need to be a bit more, eh, proactive about population control. It would be pretty bad for period features to have survived the troubles only to be destroyed slowly by shit. If you have ever been unlucky enough to have been in a building which has been infested by pigeons you will know how bad it can get. I had to go into a burnt out pub twice with pigeons in it. The first time it was only two, the second time there was a room on the upper floor completely infested. The third time I opened the door, was hit by a waft of fishy shitty stench and told the builder to go knock himself out but I wasn't going in there again.

I also worked with a woman who had a pigeon infestation in her attic, they had lice and they had to get the whole house fumigated. Contractors getting rid of them aren't doing it for a laugh, they can be really harmful.

Also seagulls are very aggressive during nesting season. They need to be discouraged from nesting in densely populated areas because they have been known to attack people (or dogs 5Foot!) who stray near their chicks. And when I say, "near" I mean within like 100 yards. On the ground. On their lunch break.

We have a sparrow hawk operating in the area, until he died a few years ago our neighbour kept pigeons and there is a pigeon fanciers club at a hotel 2 doors down, we witnessed several hawk pigeon take downs.

The worst ones are the those which have developed some disease or growths that cone to mope and die in our garden - we call them the stricken.

OP where are you based I may need somewhere to fly a Harris hawk soon, and if there's easy pigeon pickings all the better!

Just looked at the Hawkforce website and they have a picture of a fancy rat on there! These are domesticated/pet rats, so hardly the ones they would be culling! Wierd

thank you all so much for your suggestions, I have emailed the council and they asked for my phone no to ring me in near future. I have fingers crossed that they plan to have words with pigeon feeder. I love the idea of hiring a hawk!