There are eight pigeons living on my shed roof. That itself is a small victory: it has taken two years, 60 metres of anti-bird mesh, daily patrolling for and disposing of eggs and countless hours running around waving a rake to get them out of the shed. They nested in our hay, ruining the top row of bales. They pooed on everything. When we purchased this property, we inherited piles of guano half a foot deep. We haven’t yet relaxed enough to remove the drop cloths.
Now the pigeons are sitting on the eaves, clogging up the gutters (which also supply our drinking water) with poo, and pooing in the stock troughs. When my horse was hospitalised with gastroenteritis, I blamed the pigeons until my vet said that while they do carry salmonella (wonderful!), Mickey would likely be much sicker if he’d caught something from them.
I hate the pigeons. I don’t want to poison them or shoot them (though we’ve had offers from helpful farming types who have watched me chasing the blighters with a broom) because, with this one exception, we want to promote and encourage bird inhabitation. I just want them all to die suddenly and without issue. We spotted a falcon killing a mynah bird on the driveway a few months back, and I was delighted. Maybe this could be their end? But it has not eventuated. Our labrador once caught one in his mouth, to his own surprise as much as the pigeon’s, and then released it, unharmed and flapping, at my partner’s feet. This also does not present a solution.
There is a growing global movement to restore the good name of pigeons from the “rats of the sky” to their true position as one of the earliest and most easily domesticated birds, abandoned en masse by humans with the advent of wireless telegraphy. Pigeons like humans. That’s why they insist on living near us. They make excellent pets and are much easier to keep happy in captivity than other popular bird species. They are affectionate and friendly and highly trainable. It’s easy to see why humans relied upon them for 3,000 years.
But this information doesn’t really help if you’re dealing with a pigeon infestation. Rabbits also make wonderful, affectionate pets. As do cats, horses, dogs, pigs, goats and, yes, even rats. Pretty much all the feral species wreaking havoc in Australia are, in a different context, great pets.
The pigeons living in and around my shed, like all feral pigeons in Australia, are a descendent of domestic homing pigeons introduced by European settlers. They have been selectively bred for generations to do exactly what I don’t want them to do: nest in the same spot every night.
Australia and its neighbouring islands are a global hotspot of pigeon diversity with 135 species of pigeon or dove, the most flamboyantly beautiful of which is the rose-crowned fruit dove, which looks like a pigeon painted by Shirley Barber. We have crested pigeons at our place too, nesting in the hebe in our front garden. There is concern among researchers that native pigeons could be at risk from diseases brought on the wings of domestic pigeons, such as pigeon paramyxovirus type 1 which is now endemic in Australia.
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A monogamous pigeon pair will produce between four and eight eggs a year. The time between an egg being laid and a young pigeon leaving the nest is 53 days, and pigeons do not leave to conquer new territories. They stay right where they are born. In the right conditions, the flock just grows and grows. That makes lethal control methods not effective in the long term. Any decent-sized flock will breed just as quick as you can shoot them. Non-lethal control methods, such as pigeon-proofing your buildings and deterring them from settling, are advised, which means my madly waving a pool noodle at the rafters and shouting expletives is government-recommended. Unfortunately, it has not proved to be an enduring solution.
According to the Western Australian agriculture department’s handy list of permanent control options for removing pigeons and their advantages and disadvantages, the options include shooting (not advisable if you’re not a good shot), limiting available food such as spilled grain (not effective if there are multiple food sources), trapping (slow and labour-intensive and you then have to humanely euthanise the birds, which I lack the skills and stomach to do), grain laced with poison (may affect non-target species) and use of a water cannon (which it notes has a “high initial capital cost”).
None of these options seem feasible, although I did look up the cost of a water cannon before writing this sentence. There’s nothing left but to keep on as we have, chasing them with brooms and telling them as loudly as we can to go away.