We have a pair of pigeons that are constantly in our garden.?

Question

I dont mind but the droppings are awful. How can I stop them coming on to the grass any ideas.

Answer 1

You can't get rid of them, they will only come back. I've got a cat and we still have loads of birds in our garden.

Answer 2

Kill them..cook them..eat them..

Do you watch the F' word? Gordon Ramsay recently showed everyone how to skin a pigeon..

Answer 3

Pigeons and Doves are related. Pigeons are dirty and have any other pig on (despite what the courts in California USA say) of the opposite s*x.

Doves mate for life and if the pair are the same pair for a couple of seasons and return to nest in the same place I bet you have a pair of doves.

Doves return to the same place - area to rear young, pigeons don't care.

Doves make a purring sound usually 3 or 4 hoots at a calling. Pigeons call like a chicken and use the thwooo sound usually lower in volume than the doves which can be heard several hundred feet from the roost. It makes sense if you think about it. If your looking for or sounding for your one and only mate you want him/her to know where you are and join up again. If you don't care, why call out to any other pigeon just keep an eye out and fly when the others do.

I hope if you have doves you make arrangements to keep them around and maybe build a small rock garden or other accommodation where the droppings are a problem.  If they are pigeons on the other hand, well you have plenty of advise here that makes sense.

Remember doves are a sign of peace. And the dove was the animal that brought hope to the ark in the form of an olive branch. If Noah had sent out pigeons they probably didn't come back. (But I believe he did send out ravens that also came back with nothing)

Answer 4

run aroud screaming every so often...

seriously, id do it....

if i had a tardis id come over every day and in about a week they would be trained not to come back.

Answer 5

stop feeding them

Answer 6

If in the UK, don't even think of harming them.

If they are wood pigeons they are classified as a "pest" but you can only kill them if you are licenced.

You could try visiting a sporting supplies shop and getting yourself a plastic Eagle Owl to sit on the grass, which is the normal way of frightening off birds.

Answer 7

You can just spray some water on it and it'll be gone.

P.s.: it works as a good fertilizer for the soil.

Answer 8

Buy a couple of plastic/rubber snakes and leave them on your lawn, or failing that cut up a piece of garden house and improvise it to look snake like.

It keeps the pigeons of my allottment!

Answer 9

Either a fine netting over the grass if you dont use it, or a frequency controlled detterant which can be set at arange of frequencies to scare anything from birds to cats,dogs or even foxes etc.

Answer 10

get a cat or dog

they will soon chase them away

or get a recording of one.

Answer 11

Do not shoot, electrocute, exterminate, or whatever other cruel thing you can think of to harm the poor birds. I don't get why people would do such a thing when the birds aren't hurting anything. They can't help they have droppings after all.

The best thing you can do is eliminate all food sources. Pigeons, doves, and all other birds mainly stick around places that provide food, water, and shelter. Don't eliminate all the food at once. By slowly making food less and less available, you give all the birds a chance to find new places to eat and stay. Also look and see where the birds are roosting at night and perch during the day (should be easy to tell by the accumulation of droppings in one spot). If you can, try to move, remove, or change the object so that they can't sit on it. Fake owls and hawks work too, but only for a day or two. Moving the figurines everyday will help the effect last. Pigeons are incredibly intelligent birds, so they quickly learn the fake predators are actually fake.

The good thing is, pigeon droppings are very good fertilizer. Since you say you have a garden, letting the droppings dry and shoveling them into the garden can benefit the plants. Hundreds of years ago, people used to build giant dovecots so they could easily collect the manure from the flocks. It's loaded with nitrogen, so using too much at once could actually 'burn' the plants. Just figured I'd add a good side to the problem :)

No matter what you decide to do, good luck with it. Hopefully all will work out for the best...for both you and the birds.

Becky

Edit: Just read the comments about pigeons two replies up from mine. I'd just like to add that pigeons and doves are basically the same thing, and there are many different species of them. Rock Doves are the pigeons you see in big cities. Saying pigeons are dirty worthless animals and then going and saying doves are pretty birds of peace, would be completely hipocritical. Pigeons do mate for life, and do not just mate with whatever pigeon of the opposite s*x they see. The only difference is feral pigeons normally stay and breed in the same area all year round while other dove species like Mourning Doves, come back every year to breed for a 'season'. Also another thing to think about. Rock Doves (what feral city pigeons and all domestic pigeons came from) have a very good homing ability. Other wild dove species do too, but none match the Rock Doves. The only pure white doves would be the domestic doves like the Ringnecks, who have practically no homing ability at all. Letting them go would result in them flying away and never seeing them again. White pigeons on the other hand, do home and would come back. So it would actually make more sense for the "dove" that came back to Noah, to be a Rock Dove aka Pigeon. Not to mention, Rock Doves are mentioned many times in the Bible. So that really changes things there.

Sorry for the long rant, it's just comments like that don't necessarily make me happy. Especially since I probably know more about pigeons than the people who say those things :\

Answer 12

Get a cat.

Answer 13

get a pet like a cat or dog

Answer 14

shoot them if ur really sick of them. But get like a electric wire put into a tree that shocks them.

Answer 15

destroy their nests and they'll stop creating the mess.