There’s a pigeon in my chimney, WTF do I do?

[KOGoen]

Today while propped up in bed feeding DS, I heard a distinctive pigeon coo very close to me. It was incredibly loud as if it was right in my ear and it scared the shit out of me. Went to the window thinking it must have been outside but realised it was coming from the chimney which my bed is propped up against. The bird was literally right behind where my head was resting.

I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to listen to the poor thing starving to death in there, and my head rests right next to where it is trapped so I can hear it cooing constantly. I’ve moved my bed to the other end of the room. Bird is behind a cheap plastic vent in the chimney as well rather than brick/concrete so it’s very loud. I can hear its every movement and when it dies I imagine it will stink. I’d shine a torch in there to get a look of it, but to be honest I’m too scared. I posted a bit of bread through the vent for it, because as I said I don’t want it starving to death in there. How can I deal with this effectively? I’m going to have to remove the vent, let it come out and fly out of the window aren’t I? It’s definitely stuck there, I heard it eating the bread and I played pigeon noises on my phone which it responded to.

I have a huge bird phobia so this is my worst nightmare. If it wasn’t for the fact that it’s clearly behind the vent and not behind a solid wall I might have been able to ignore it and pretend it wasn’t happening

You played it pigeon noises 🤣🤣 I had this twice, both times it was a bat! I opened up the chimney and it flew straight out

Ask UB40, they had a rat in their kitchen, now you have a second verse and a potential hit

Don't just open up the vent and hope that the bird will fly out of the window, it will flap all around your room, leaving a trail of soot & droppings in its wake.
Get someone to help you. Use a large towel or sheet to capture the bird as it leaves the fireplace, have a route out of the house planned with doors all open, so you can release the bird ASAP.

Get your chimney capped!

A pest control company might be able to help too. Maybe? I don't really know?? Some pest control staff work with birds of prey so you would think they might know what to do?

I'm obviously far posher than you. I had a grouse fall down my chimney (thank god there is a cover over the fireplace) at the beginning of lockdown. A towel and a lot of screaming later I got it out to the garden.

We had this! My husband managed to remove the panel of wood (it's a disused chimney in our bedroom) and there he was standing there holding a bit of wood on his head with a pigeon on top! Bird was fine. You can't leave it there to die though, that would be awful (and incredibly smelly, not to mention thousand of bluebottles in your house).

It really does depend on the configuration of your individual chimney/fireplace/thingamajig, though. I am still baffled by the helpful poster who had absolutely nothing to add, other than to snicker at something I said, as if never in the history of the universe had a bird left a chimney in the direction it came in. Weird.

We've had this a few times. Call a local chimney sweep to free it. They're very used to doing it and will ensure there is no/minimal mess in your room. Don't leave it do die a horrible death. It will smell and it may well attract flies, which will mean your room will get swarmed with them.

You need a cage on working chimneys or unused ones capping after.

It won’t be able to fly up and out now. You need to open up your wood burner or fireplace, then shine a bright torch at it. Leave the windows open and the bird will fly out the room.

This has worked to free two birds for us, chimneys now have guards on them!

Agreed. They can't fly directly upwards.

Any luck @KOGoen?

How odd. Is it only pigeons? As at least three birds have fallen down my chimney and flown back out eventually. Or perhaps they scaled the walls walking horizontally? They definitely got themselves back out.

How do you know they were properly down the chimney and how do you know they got out again?

Please update @KOGoen, I'm weirdly invested! It was the pigeon noises on the phone that got me hooked

We have had this a few times it's awful, both times we have had to physically get them out by hand reaching into the fireplace. Last one (a magpie) we could hear but not see, overnight it flew out of the fireplace and flapped about in the room and woke us up. Shite everywhere! But eventually it flew out of the window. I really feel for you as I am so scared of birds.

How do you know they were properly down the chimney and how do you know they got out again?

Is that to me? I could hear them, I know the rough shape of the interior of the chimney and fireplace and the location of the firebox roof, as it were. I could hear them land and flap and scratch about, etc.

One smaller one did find its way into a place, I can't quite envisage how, that the only way out was through the firebox itself, although it wasn't in the firebox per se, so I opened the loungeroom windows wide, closed all the doors, and opened the glass door of the firebox and it flew about a bit, landed on the dado I think it's called and then saw the window and went straight out thank god. But that was a smallish bird. I tend to get more medium sized ones around my house.

As with small beasts, again, the sounds are pretty clear. I can hear them scuffling, turning over for a more comfortable position on the roof of the firebox, etc, often over a period of days before they can be persuaded out. Last one, thank god went up on its own as I half-slept. And only once have I had to open another exit point - having previously cleared the way laboriously, and it was as or more terrified than me, and scarpered out. I've had to call a fireplace expert out for an old one in another unused old chimney.

As for pigeons being (hahahahaha, etc) so obviously incapable of flying up a chimney, a very quick google told me they can - but that most chimneys are not sufficiently wide. I guess mine are. But as the OP has posted and evaporated, we may never know the basic configuration of which she writes. I wish I'd never bothered to respond, and try to help.

If you don’t find a way to get it out, try to seal the vent up. We had an invasion of flies one day and the source was a dead pigeon stuck in the chimney just behind the vent in a bedroom. Years later when we decorated we took the vent off and found the skeleton complete with feathers ... and yes, get the chimney capped. Whoever had capped the chimneys before at ours had only done the main downstairs one and weirdly not the bedroom ones.

When my mum had her living flame has fire replaced they found about 20 dead pigeons behind it. The gas man said it was a record.....

We had this! We removed the plate at the bottom of the chimney and an enormous pigeon was just sitting there

Posted too soon!!

We chucked a towel over it and took it outside. It had managed to cover our sitting room in soot which then blew up the hoover. We didn't feel too charitable towards the pigeon!!!