Can I discourage pigeons without discouraging other birds?

[BewareTheBeardedDragon]

The bloody pigeons, having been unaware of my garden for the past 4 years have suddenly discovered a feast of brassicas and completely stripped all my kale, Brussels and Perennial kale as well as leaving huge amounts of large bird poos everywhere.

I also have many small birds, like various tits, wrens, dunnocks, robins etc which I love to watch, harm no plants and actually perform helpful pest control activities while going about their business.

I know I can (and will) make and place nets or cloches over the brassicas, but I'd quite like the discourage the pigeons visits completely. But I don't want to scare off the small birds.

I've thought of shiny stuff hanging about the place, replica birds of prey, scarecrow but I think all of these would scare off all the birds (or fail completely).

Is there a way to selectively scare away the pigeons?

Watching with interest, hate our pigeons!

I don’t have pigeons but I get Jays and pheasants which are b**tards. Pretty as they are.. the jays don’t come if I put bird feeders out designed for small birds only. The pheasants scratch around mostly. In fact I sometimes think my garden is not mine at all. It belongs to the wildlife.. a price you pay for living in snowdonia.

See what the pigeons go for (which you have) and cover it up.. good luck.

Will covering their preferred foods keep them away? Great if so!

Not really, no.

You can only cover your brassicas, and not feed on the ground, and hope that they go elsewhere.
Pigeons also don't like densely planted areas, so you could try hanging feeders over a very densely-planted bed. The bits that drop will be fine for little ground feeders but the pigeons won't like it as much.

Though they'll probably still hop around the side of the bed and shit all over your lawn

Oh, do t feed on the ground OR on trays and tables. Hanging things only, hung off thin twigs so fat pigeons can't balance.

Ensure nothing significant to perch on at feeders that hang and you can pop an upturned metal hanging basket over the top of your ground seed which stops larger birds from accessing it whilst others fit in-between the metal wires, you may need to put a rock or a brick on top to stop it moving. Only other tip I have is to reduce big areas that are used for landing and take off as this will stop the larger visitors dropping in as they will not have the space to get out quickly.

Oh dear. I don't have feeders - I just have lots of stuff that the smaller birds like to eat, which I leave over winter so that they can eat the seed and insects. I can't get rid of the lawn, which is their landing spot, because the dc use it for play. I have told the dc that they are at liberty to go out and shout at pigeons whenever they spot them on the property from now on. Child labour

In that case, the attraction is the brassicas. So start by netting them.

IME pigeons are extremely dense and don’t recognise danger until it’s less than 2m away. On the other hand they do recognise that a human shouting and waving it’s arms from behind a window is no danger at all

An air rifle