To hate pigeons with every bone in my body?

[MargoLivebetter]

I live in a flat and we have outdoor space and the pigeons have moved in and I cannot get rid of them. I made a huge mistake in lockdown of letting two pigeons rear a baby pigeon on the deck. I hadn't realised that they'd laid an egg and when I found it, it had hatched and I couldn't bring myself to lob it over the balcony.

Oh what a price I have paid for my kindness / weakness. I now have a colony of the fuckers living on my decking. I am constantly on pigeon patrol collecting up their sad twig nests and endlessly lobbing their bloody eggs over the balcony. I have pigeon shit everywhere and on days I WFH, I listen to their endless mating noises.

I have tried everything (bar shooting them). I have vile sticky stuff all over the edges of things, which is supposed to deter them but doesn't. I had a bird startler noise thing, which they got used to after about 2 days. I have festooned the place in bird scarers and silvery things, all of which they completely ignore.

I am so fed up with them. Does anyone know a way of getting rid of these bastard birds?

@MargaretThursday dear god, really? How do pest control deal with the problem then?

I'm sorry you have this problem, I would be freaking out. Sinister, flappy, red-eyed things they are. I'm shit scared of them 😂Are they not classed as a pest or vermin if they're encroaching on your property? Hope you find a way to get rid

Surely not, birds in an outdoor area isn't really a pest issue is it?

Op, stop lobbing eggs over the balcony, if nothing else think of the mess left on the ground below.

Try a bit of netting over your balcony to deter them, they'll go elsewhere and then you can remove the netting. Do many other things bother you like this?

Netting, spikes, gel repellents - there are loads of ways they can do it. Just google it and contact someone.

Wood pigeons are one of the tastiest meats you can get. Blooming lovely.
Wouldn't suggest you eat their towny cousins though...!
Cat?!?

We had a similar issue. We’d always had a few pigeons around, which was fine, but it rapidly increased after a neighbour found a nest on her roof terrace… suddenly there were 150+ roosting, making mess and waking us up with their incessant noise at 5am every day. 😬 We tried all the usual methods, noise machines, fake birds of prey etc, but they just got used to them. The silver holographic tape worked for some pigeons, but can look a bit tatty/tacky. At one point I ended up making a spray from vinegar and chilli which stopped them sitting in certain places - this worked a bit, but only until it rains!
Two things that made a difference for us:

1. going out with a black bin liner and waving it in the air to make a ‘crack’ sound - they seem to be very startled by this sound and also the sight of a ‘big black thing’. You need to do this regularly, every time you see a group of them, to make them feel uncomfortable and fly away.
2. Coincidentally, (luckily!) we also started to get more crows and magpies around - the pigeons seem a bit scared of them so some moved on. I fed the crows to encourage them to stay and act as ‘bouncers’.

We still get some pigeons, but not many these days and we now have a much wider variety of birds.

I'd love a cat @OrlandointheWilderness but I'd be worried it would jump off the balcony or onto the roof up above. Hard to describe the slightly weird flat and deck that I have, but I think it wouldn't be cat friendly.

@Janiie I have such a weird outdoor space. I think it would be very challenging to net it, if not entirely impossible. I'm fairly calm and reasonable with a long fuse. Brought up two kids on my own, one with autism and held down a full-time job (as you seem to want a bit of background), but 4 years of pigeon shit is starting to get to me. It is particularly bad at the moment as it is breeding season and there are so many of them trying to breed on my deck. I'd always rather not get to the lobbing egg stage, so I'm like a demented woman chasing them away and re-situating spikes etc etc etc. It is a large garden around the flat, so there isn't any mess that is worse than what the foxes, rats, dogs and cats are doing.

Completely agree with this.

What an awful post.

Thanks @BigBarm I will try the black bin liner. I may even be able to peg some to stakes for a while to see if that will deter them. I have used the silver holographic tape but they got used to it so quickly.

I was reading something about seagulls in one of the gulf states the other day.

They only eat dropped food, and now they are so fat from this they can’t fly anymore.

<pointless interruption, but kind of interesting>

You destroy their nests and eggs. That's illegal as well as a really fucking horrible cunty thing to do. I hope they continue to shit over everything you love forever.

This is our wildlife.

My thoughts exactly

I hate them more than the Devil. They completely ruin public spaces - but to have them infesting domestic spaces is just unbearable. It would make me desperately unhappy - to the point of looking to move house.

I just can’t understand why you encouraged them in the first place, @MargoLivebetter …

Pretty shitty to destroy their nests. Pigeons are actually really loyal and good parents.
Ive worked with animals for years and really like pigeons, they are sweet and gentle birds. Can’t you just live and let live.

😂

I love pigeons, but I sympathise at least a little bit.

I agree too. Pigeons only live how they do, in cities and around people because we domesticated them and then abandoned them when we didn't see a use for them anymore. They're intelligent birds and there are far better ways of deterring them then throwing their nests and babies over a balcony fgs.

YABU and you're breaking the law by smashing their eggs, how horrible.

Human domesticated pigeons when we needed them, and got them used to living in cities, on rooftops etc. Now we punish them for being there.

You should get a professional in to relocate them. It'd probably be the best outcome for all involved.

What a really upsetting post.

YABU and the British attitude to Pigeons, a bird who was used to assist us during the war, and one which is intelligent and sentient is fucking appalling.

Habitat shmabitat. As though urban pigeons had anything to do with wood pigeons 😁 These are former domestic animals that have no natural predators and breed like crazy in an urban environment. At population level I gather what works best is actually letting them nest and replace the eggs with fakes. Not sure that would solve OPs problem. Personally I'd be tempted to adopt a baby buzzard..

Leave them be!!

Put statues of owls about

My neighbour tried that; it's now absolutely plastered in their shit, and occasionally one sits on its head just to prove it can

I'm a bit more sympathetic to them ATM since one half of my resident pair was killed and now its mate sits on the shed just gazing at where its body lay ... and it's prime mating season ...

I mean, it must be kind of annoying to have LOTS of pigeons pooping all over your stuff, even though they are sweet.

I have similar feelings about mice. Adorable little things! I mostly try to live and let live, but was pretty upset when they broke into a big bag of rice and pooped in it.

Nits and clothes moths however....they get no mercy from me.

Yes I do live in Victorian squalor.

Dont be ridiculous!