TOT deterring pigeons

[alan_m]

On a recent trip to rural Shropshire I was shown the traditional method of deterring crows from crops. A dead crow is staked to the ground.

At home I have some bird feeders on a pole with both seeds and fat balls which are visited by a fairly large number of small birds, especially when they are feeding young. The downside is that these small birds tend to be messy feeders and drop food to the ground. This attracts Pigeons which wait on my, and neighbours, roofs waiting for the food to be dropped. One or two pigeons is not too much of a problem but over the past year the flock is now 30 which deposit shit on the roofs which not only discolour the tiles but also fertilise moss etc. I have tried various methods to try and discourage them including a plastic owl which worked for all of an hour before they were feeding within a couple of feet away.

A couple of days ago one of the pigeons was killed by a cat or fox and left on the lawn. On the first day afterwards no feeding pigeons were seen and the number waiting on the roof was down to around half a dozen. I covered the corpse overnight to prevent its removal by the prowling wild-life and today the uncovered dead pigeon seems to have prevented any pigeons returning to my roof or garden. The smaller birds are feeding as normal.

It seems that traditional methods not only work with crows!

[whisky-dave]

On Monday we had a pigeon in the teaching lab, we have fire alarm installers in and they have opened up the cieling hatches and a pigeon flew down into the lab. we've seen 3 so far this week, nothing today thought. While I was using the SMT station and microscope I could hear one cooing above.

[Roger Tonkin]

I used to hang a large dish below the feeders to catch the discards, which other birds would then eat. Not many pigeons around then, I was in the country and apart from the odd collared dove the only pigeons we saw were in town1 Mind you we did have our sparrow hawk, who kept th smaller birds on their toes.

[alan_m]

Elfin Safety will be closing you down for a month or two while they remove the ton of pigeon poo!

[alan_m]

I've tried similar with the bird feeders that have an inbuilt large bowl like base. All this does is allows the pigeons to gain access to the feeder as they can perch (with slight difficulty) on this bowl.

The dead pigeon is still on my lawn and not a live pigeon has been seen today. Other birds are still feeding including on the ground beneath the feeders.

I've just returned from visiting friends in the Shropshire Hills where it is very common to see Red Kites and Buzzards. However, close to my friends house crows were nesting and if any Kite or Buzzard appeared they were immediately mobbed by all nearby crows and driven away.

[whisky-dave]

I think they only arrived last week as the floor above has been cutted and it was open to the elements.

[SteveE]

We had niger seeds out until they started to go mouldy! Not one bird seemed interested. Fat Balls seem to attract all birds and in our garden aerial battles of squabbling starlings :-)

[alan_m]

It's peanuts that tend to go mouldy in my garden. A guest speaker at a Women's Institute meeting that my mother attended suggested that many of the peanuts sold as bird food in the uk are too small and hard.

[Andy Burns]

Ditto, they hardly ever touch peanuts now, but the t*ts and finches wolf the niger seed down.

[charles]

here peaanuts were gorged on last week - but I didn't see it happening.

[AnthonyL]

Where do you live? We only get goldfinches, nuthatches and woodpeckers around the Midlands.

[Roger Tonkin]

We get red kites here on the edge of town. But remember that Kites and Buzzards are carrion feeders and do not usually take live prey. Kites almost seem to enjoy the attention of the crows, but seem to get tired of it occasionally and turn on their side and "pretend" to grab at the nearest crow .... peace descends.