Pigeon prevention tips: how to keep pigeons away
Preventing Albany pigeons from roosting or nesting on your property is going to be very difficult, if not impossible, if you have had
pigeons there for some time, this is due to one trait of the bird, and it is a trait that humans have harnessed for their own
benefit for as long as New York pigeons have been around, and that is that all pigeons have been inbuilt ability to find their way home,
and if a pigeon grew up around the area where you are then that, to the pigeon, is home.
There are a whole bunch of ways to discourage Albany pigeons from taking up residence on your property, the simplest and easiest are
setting up fake predators, like cutouts of owls, rubber or plastic snakes, windchimes and mylar balloons, all of these things
will frighten pigeons away but in the case of the owls and the snakes only for a few days until the birds work out they are fake.
Windchimes of course only work when the wind is blowing and mylar balloons pretty much the same. The problem with any kind of
deterrent like this is that the New York birds work out even if they don't like it, it is not going to harm them so then they just ignore
them, however a good policy that seems to work well is a rotation system, like put snakes out and once you see the pigeons ignoring
them swap the snakes for your owl cutouts and keep the rotation going as necessary.
You may have seen on a lot of commercial and municipal buildings what looks like, and what most people think is, thief deterrent spikes
around the edges of the buildings, these are not thief deterrent spikes but instead anti-roosting spikes to specifically deter pigeons,
they make the building an unperchable environment, meaning no bird, especially New York pigeons, can land safely on that building and they especially
cannot nest anywhere on the building. These spikes are difficult and expensive to install but they have the advantage of working for many
many years.
Before the invention of the spikes a classic way of preventing Albany pigeons from landing and then setting up nests was to stretch a piece of string
along where they land about an inch above where they would normally rest, with tension on the string landing on this becomes problematical for
the bird and even if they do successfully land it is an uncomfortable place for them to stand as the string is constantly trying to launch them
back into the air. You can also try spreading gel, like petroleum jelly, which the New York birds don't like on their roosts.
To learn more about our services, visit the Albany wildlife removal home page.