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Started with one or two and they've told their friends of the feast to be had at my house [img]/forums/images/icons/mad.gif[/img] . They've found my feeders and the leavin's on the ground.
Suggestions on making it not so appetizing for them at my place? Noise makers/guns won't fly at my place. Chuck
How long did you have your feeders up before the pigeons found them? Maybe you could take them down until the pigeons lose interest and move on. Other than that I don't know how you can get rid of them. We had them at our feeders and never figured out how to discourage them from coming up. We finally just stopped feeding and they left. We did not start feeding after that but I figure they would eventually return if we did.
We have pigeons here in the plant where I work and no one has figured out a way to get rid of them yet. They perch and roost inside the open buildings and their droppings cover everything in sight. My supervisor brought in a match grade pellet gun and shot dozens of them but it did not seem to make a dent. Now they are talking about calling in an exterminator to put out poison for them. However, that would not work in your case because you would also poison other birds and who knows what else.
Seems like a couple of years ago someone set up an electronic device here at work to discourage them but that did not work either. Once again in your case it would create undesireable effects on other birds.
Best I can say is either shoot 'em or try taking down your feeder for a spell. Good luck with a remedy. If you do find a remedy be sure and let us all know so we can use the same technique to rid ourselves of those nasty "bridge chickens."
Chris - I've been at this house and feeding the birds for 5 years. They showed up this spring and have slowly multiplied to about 10 -15.
I've cut back on my feeding. I just filled the feeders after a couple weeks of no food. We'll see how long 'til they show up again. I'm on the lookout for some different type feeders to minimize waste on the ground.
I currently blast 'em with a super soaker when I see 'em. Even though I have a couple acres, I live in a sub and the neighbors might cause problems if I start killing them. Plus.....if you can believe this......about 2 years ago my city enacted an ordinance with regard to feeding undesirable (i.e. pigeons etc.) birds. I'd like to solve the problem so the neighbors don't think I'm purposely feeding them. Then I'd look at some kind of fine. I hope a few bad(and dirty) birds don't ruin it for the rest. Chuck
Nothing that any gub'ment bureaucracy at any level does surprises me anymore. That is so typical... enact an ordinance that is impossible to comply with. I guess their solution to not feeding undesireable birds is to not feed any birds at all. There is so much to be said for living in the country and not putting up with city ordinances and neighborhood property owners associatons and deed restrictions!
your right, In the country you dont worrie about pigeons. The crows chace them off and there is a season on crows if ya dont like to many of them [img]/forums/images/icons/cool.gif[/img] Infact there is a season on pigeons in the country...right [img]/forums/images/icons/confused.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/ooo.gif[/img] But then i dont even hunt or own a fire arm, well maybe a little pistol for in home secuity [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]
Larry
There are ultrasonics but they may drive away other birds and wildlife. Products like "Tanglefoot" are non toxic and seem to "bug" birds, big time. Tanglefoot doesn't glue the birds to a perch but they hate it and won't perch where it is applied. No noise, huh? How about netting and neck wringing? A back yard cat or dog would be a decent deterrent.
Pat
Chris - Got a few more years before I'll head for the hills. In the meantime, I just have to deal with country livin' in the city. Definitely looking forward to country livin' in the country. Chuck
Wait a minute, pigeons are DEFINITELY a problem in the country. I have a bunch living in my barn, as do most of my neighbors. I don't mind them, but I DO mine their poop raining down on my equipment. The stuff is like concrete once it dries. I'd love to get rid of them, but I don't want to kill them, just make them relocate. Any ideas would be appreciated!!!
Didn't say they were not a problem in the country. Just have more options on how to deal with them without worrying about rules, laws, neighbors who live ten feet away, etc. I respect and appreciate all wildlife but pigeons would get a .22 bullet as often as I could get one in my sights if I lived in the country. As mentioned by several folks their poop is plentiful and nasty. Not only that I have seen pigeons carrying some type of flying bug (parasite?) on them at work. I don't need that type of filth around my house. Sorry Rich... no suggestions outside of shooting them. Good luck finding a way to get rid of them.
We had some in one or two of the buildings at work. Almost impossible to get rid of. Poisoned feed was finally used but in this case there were no other birds involved.
Perhaps netting sized to allow smaller birds in would help some.
Attracting Raptors would help but that may not be feasable.
Egon
What i meant by they are not a problem in the country is: You can rid them the way you want and dont have to worrie about neighbors calling the law if you shoot them or pretty much any way you want to get rid of them. I love animals but not rodents and a pigeon is a rat with wings as far as im concerned. We have lots of them at work and they are nasty. DooDoo every where lots of times dead ones laying around. I hate them!
Larry
Some of the guys at work have said that pigeon droppings carry diseases which can affect humans so I just did a search and here is what I found. Just one more reason to not want them around.
This link also offers two possible solutions for getting rid of pigeons. I like second idea, baiting them with hallucinagenic corn. Sounds very interesting!
Might run all your songbirds off too but an owl decoy or two placed on a limb in the area might work for you. We installed two at work after we tried everything else (except poison) to rid ourselves of an ever growing colony. The pigeons left pronto and have not been back. Our shop supervisor later put crow decoys in our main maintenance shop to chase out the sparrows, it works also. Northern Tool & Equipment sells the decoys. Ours are just hard plastic but are life size and look real. Check out this link: Northern Tool - Owl Decoy
I thought your idea about the owl decoys was a good one so I told my supervisor at work. He informed me that one building had two decoys in it and pigeons could be seen roosting near them. He said the pigeons get used to them and ignore them after a while. Too bad! I am tired of pigeon poop everywhere.
Again, is it better never than late or late than never?
Anyway, if you want to get more aggressive than tanglefoot try this: String a taught small gage wire above long poles and other favorite roosts inside your barn or affected building. It will interfere with their perching.
You an get really aggressive and make an electric perch. Use a small diameter PVC pipe. Drill a series of holes in it at 3, 6, 9, and 12 o'clock on say 2 inch centers. Weave a bare conductive wire through a pair of holes, say at 1200 then weave that wire through a pair of holes at 3 o'clock, then 6, then 9 and repeat. A second wire (always kept insulated fron the first is similarly run through sets of holes.
When you are through you should have an electric perch that will have a high probability of having a bird contact one conductor with one foot and another conductor with the other foot. The objective being a foot to foot shock not just through one part of a foot to another part of the same foot. Energize the perch with a multi-time timer like is used for turning a light on and off at intervals. Place the perch in a "nice" location likely to be frequented by pidgeons and where no barn cats or people might contact it.
If you have a high pidgeon population you'll accumulalte quite a pile of dead birds beneath the "Electric Perch." If collected while fresh, you can stuff and roast them or freeze till you accumulalte enough for a feast.
Alternatively a small metal feeding trough can be rigged with conductive perches insulated from the trough. One connection to the trough and one to the perches. This needs to be inside a barn or other location not frequented by desireable birds. NOTE: you do want to remember to disconect power when cleaning, filling, or relocating or feel the wrath of Ready Kilowatt (KillerWatt?)
There are feeders that discriminate against birds above a certain weight. They are sold as squirrel proof feeders but will keep pidgeons out of the feed.
If it is worth it to you a supressor for a .22 can be legally purchased for about $300 (plus $200 for a one time Government fee) Takes a more in-depth background check than a concealed carry permit) You can then blaze away with .22 shot shells in your .22 rifle (Shotgun?) They won't shoot far enough to endanger anyone at any reasonable distance and with the supressor it sure won't be disturbing anyone with the sound. The thump of a fat pidgeon hitting the ground would likely be louder.
I observed the proprieter of a local gun shop fire a suppressed Ruger 10-22 inside his shop. I thought he had dry fired it (snapped it on an empty) it was that quiet. It would make a silent semi-auto mini-shotgun.
I personally refuse to use poison for bird control and have been getting away from poison for rats and mice as I am concerned that the "sick" ones may get outside and be eaten by owls, hawks, snakes, or whatever and harm them.
Pat
Pat,
Good suggestions for controlling an unwanted pigeon population.
The pigeon problem at work has been addressed by bringing in a local pest control company which distributed the hallucanigenic corn in the areas where the pigeons were congregating and roosting. The good news is that there are very few pigeons left. The bad news is that in the first week I found four dead pigeons, one dead mocking bird, one dead blackbird and one dead dove. I don't so much mourn the passing of the pigeons but the killing of desireable birds does not make me very happy. However, this is the approach that management has decided to take and there is not anything I can do about it. At least I can alert everyone who reads this post that hallucinagenic corn is not a good route to go for pigeon control.
Thre is considerable lead time on getting a suppressor. The shop where I ordered mine estimated 3-4 months. Up to a month to get product and 3 months to go through Governmental paperwork hoops and delays. Since the device is registered by serial number and the transfer fee is $200, I won't be selling it or letting it out on loan. The good news is that it can be attached to any .22 I want to put it on (considering that it has to be physically possible) and I'm told with a Ruger 10-22 that you don't have to use subsonic ammo since velocity losses will drop most standard long rifle rounds below 1100 fps.
A big plus is that the 10-22 will autoload the .22 shot shells with the blue plastic bullet shaped tops. The old fashioned shot shells with the long cases crimped over at the end didn't digest well in most auto loaders (at least the ones I had).
I'll be glad to have a super quiet .22 short range shotgun. I have friends with extreme pidgeon problems that could be solved quickly and easily after I run out of moving targets. I'll bet it will look odd to anyone who would see it in action, a small gun looking thing making pidgeons silently drop out of the air in rapid succession.
This would work just fine in many indoor industrial situations and is used for professional pest control. I too have an adult air rifle, a Feinwork Brau with a 3-8x Beeman zoom scope that will drive tacks, but tacks standing still not flying ones. The cyclic rate on the air rifle is a tad slow for the action one sees in pidgeon ellimination.
I once had a problem with pidgeons eating my dogs kibble. I set up a propped up bird cage as a trap over the food dish and the greedy pidgeons swarmed in and knocked the prop out and caught themselves.
I have other designs for pest ellimination that keeps poison out of the ecosystem but most folks don't have industrial strength pulse lasers handy. I recently bought a wind up mouse trap that uses no bait or poison that could be scaled up to deal with pidgeons. I once thought about an industrial strength shop vac or "dust collector" system as a pidgeon vacuum. Imagine a pidgeon sized wind tunnel that turns on when occupied. Pidgeon is bagged for disposal.
Patrick
I have been using an old crossman pellet gun to shoot them in my barn. With pellets two pumps dead pidgeon, with five pumps dead bird and hole in roof. [img]/forums/images/icons/shocked.gif[/img]
Also some good wing shooting, someone walks into the barn the birds fly out through eve and bang bang! They usually circle the barn before flying off and bang again.
Poop on tobacco ups the weight but the quality goes down, probability just goes into smokes anyway. [img]/forums/images/icons/wink.gif[/img]
Patrick
"Poop on tobacco ...probability just goes into smokes anyway."
Or chewing tobacco! [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img]
Do you shout "PULL" to get your assistant to flush the quary? I had a flashback to the Mel Brooks movie where the French nobles are skeet shooting with peasants for clay pidgeons. Recall why the frisbie-like targets are called clay pidgeons? Because they are clay and are used in place of real pidgeons that used to be released for wing shooters.
If you can get close enough and the noise isn't a non-starter then shotshells in a Ruger 10-22 or similar that will auto-load the shotshells works well and you can get off a decent fraction of the 10 shots if you are a good "snap shooter" and are in close. Doesn't penetrate the roof either but you need to be close.
Don't worry about them contaminating the tobacco, the surgeon general has placed adequate warning labels on all tobacco products sold here for human use.
Pat
Usually depends on the barn man feeling sporting or not. Twelve gauge, no warning, 16 last minute and so on. [img]/forums/images/icons/blush.gif[/img]
Friends dad talked his boss into letting take a stevens crack shot on the job and killing the pests. He got good enough to richocet the shot shells off the roof and into the birds.
Its a same they are such pests because they are pretty birds. [img]/forums/images/icons/frown.gif[/img]
Patrick
Poorboy, Yeah, pigeons can be neat birds. As a kid I kept a barrel nosed homing pigeon. Various of my friends raised pigeons, mostly fancy pigeons. Some are great to watch as they do serious aerobatics. There are rollers, tumblers, etc. Muffed pigeons with "wheel pants" and so forth. A couple breedersof my aquaintance raised white kings and silver kings. They were considerably heavier and were raised to eat. Squab is a delicacy and brings a hefty price in a fine eatery. They are ready to dress out just as the feathers in their "arm pits" fill in. That is where they feather last. They have attained good size but are still quite tender.
Funny thing that you connected pigeons to tobacco since shredded tobacco stalks was the preferred nesting material that breeders offered the birds. It was supposed to control mites and such.
Patrick
Pat that really is interesting about the nesting material and does explain alot. It seems that the birds would rather nest in my tobacco barns than in my feed barns and I always wondered why. After I changed over one tobacco barn to a hay setup the birds left
Its amazing how much information is on these boards with people who have such varied experiences.
Patrick
Patrick, I learned from it too. I knew breeders bought shredded tobacco stalks to offer to their pigeons for their sole source of nesting material and that it was obstensibly to prevent mites etc. but I didn't know "free range" pigeons had a pref for tobacco nests.
It might have been something as simple as you can't make a nest out of grain but they seem to have voted in favor of tobacco over straw/hay and we know they will use straw for nests (at least in the abscence of tobacco.)
Thanks for sharing your piece of the crazy quilt.
Patrick
Few animals never forget the ways and previous places and destination .Pigeons are one of them.Its natural factor and the habits which are given by God.There must be a reason that is why they are not leaving.
Do not drop any thing to feed on your terrace and also in surroundings of your house.Try this before going to shooting step.