Ca-caw-caw: Pigeon poops on tot's face as tempers fray at siege of Lincoln flats

Sparrowhawks, ma'am.

Manchester has this covered

Perhaps ship this enterprising chap down there?

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/hunt-man-feeding-pigeons-piccadilly-15763463

Food

What are the blighters feeding on? And - side issue - who fed the first inhabitants, thereby engendering a whole colony (unless the household rubbish is not properly disposed of)?

Eliminating the food supply gets rid of a lot of animals, teenagers included.

Dangerous stuff

Yes, pigeon poop can be dangerous, but I think it has to be dried out, and then the dust from the droppings is where the problem starts. I seem to recall the old man talking about this happening to a colleague.

When we hard brexit we will be issued with pellet guns.

Vermin control was never so tasty.

Gulls

Being friendly is an option and feed them at a particular place.

I had issues a year ago with agressive seagulls. They were nesting on my roof and saw anyone in the garden as fair game for an attack. So last year, I started feeding it, at the same time every day. The seagull stopped attacking and waited patiently near the back door for food and saw us as a food provider rather than a threat.

At one point, it even let its chick in my garden and we were able to be in the garden and not get attacked. Easier summer for all.

I got an Air rifle

And some free time.

PPS some aim to hit a kid in the face

No wonder

No wonder the place is infested with the flying rats. Plenty of roosting opportunity and probably plenty of food sources around from people littering. Whomever thought it would be a good idea to mount those aircon units outside the flat like that deserves to live there for the rest of their lives. Only way to solve it now is to put proper boxes around them with steeply sloped tops and all access holes sealed up properly. The only other solution is to shoot the f%^kers, but that tends to get the treehugging crowd riled up and is difficult to do safely in a residential area.

Jeebus H Christ, what sort of idiots inhabit the area? Spikes only work when the whole top surface is covered, not just a single row on the edge, and someone who says she was "in floods of tears" because of kakasplat needs shooting more than the flying rats. And line up the ones who don't understand how to cover "sensory equipment" beside her.

Pigeon coops

I've seen several pigeon coops in France that are designed to control populations. They attract the pigeons in a central location and some of the eggs are then sterilized. It's also used to monitor the health of the pigeons to prevent the spread of disease.

CMOT Dibbler's new addition - pigeon onna stick.

"Standard issue...

Pigeon proof vest, private"

"Farewell to the bravest item of clothing I've ever known..."

/Skipper

Anyone know how to get blueberries out of feathers?

Birth control. Feed them, sparsely mind you, mix pigeon birth control into the feed. That’s actually a thing.

Hawks

Rent a hawk every so often. Various places round London do that -- they remain pigeon-free for quite a while. No pigeon sh*t, no fuss. And a rather lovely bit of history.

First time I saw it was in Leadenhall Markets mid-afternoon (empty). Chap with a dirty great gauntlet stood in the middle, looked up and there's a dirty great hawk parked on a high crossbeam down the other end, he lifted the gauntlet and the thing just dropped then whump out come the wings about 5foot off the ground and it shot down the length of the market. Got talking to him, he said it's fairly common, and as he pointed out "you never see a pigeon round here do you?"

I'll just leave this here.

We had a major pigeon problem round our area.

A guy came and put up cages with food, the stupid birds just walk in over and over again.

The guy comes and takes them away. We haven't really asked what he does with them, but I suspect that they get their necks broken.

You can't just take them away and release them, the buggers either come back or become someone else's problem.

Your only practical solution is to kill them really, as quickly and painlessly as possible.

Attaches microsd card to pigeon. *bang* aww poor pigeon done in by el reg commentards. So much for my safe method of sending and receiving data.

Go fly a kite

Here in Spain I have seen big buzzard shaped kites on a length of cord at the end of a 4 or 5 metre fibre glass pole, even the seagulls tend to stay away from them.

As an alternative; back in the '70s a mate of mine worked for a commercial freezer installer, their warehouse was infested with pigeons whose poo was causing thousands of pounds worth of damage to the freezers stored there.

The boss paid my mate and I to go there with air rifles three weekends in a row to shoot as many as possible.

The first weekend we took out over a hundred birds, the second weekend they knew who we were and flew out of sight, we found the answer was to tie a couple of pallets to the forklift, one driving the other on one of the pallets and hiding behind the other then raise the pallet over the eaves, shoot a bird and drop back down, probably got about half the number of the first weekend as it was slower. The third weekend I think the pigeons had sussed out that weekends were unhealthy and there were hardly any when we turned up but still plenty in the week, pigeons are fast learners, shooting them may reduce numbers but the best thing is to remove all food sources and put anti bird goo and spikes everywhere they could possibly settle.

Nuking from space might work.

Air rifle.

The people who complain about such measures do not live in an area blighted by pigeons. Of course, should they ever suffer that problem, after the first bought of hand-wringing and failed "humane" solutions, they tend to 'regretfully' propose using an air rifle.

The other point is that those handwringers tend to live in houses not flats, cul-de-sacs not estates, and the council responds to their issues in far less time than three years....

Been there, seen it, done it.

Air rifle.

The people who complain about such measures do not live in an area blighted by pigeons. Of course, should they ever suffer that problem, after the first bought of hand-wringing and failed "humane" solutions, they tend to 'regretfully' propose using an air rifle.

The other point is that those handwringers tend to live in houses not flats, cul-de-sacs not estates, and the council responds to their issues in far less time than three years....

Been there, seen it, done it.

I had this problem a few years ago when I moved in to a new house. there were pigeons everywhere, pooping on everything. Here in the states they don't consider an air rifle a fire arm and pigeons are considered small game birds in most states, so I solved the problem with a hunting license and this.

https://www.amazon.com/Gamo-611006325554-Whisper-Fusion-Rifle/dp/B01APG0VFC/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1549047280&sr=8-3&keywords=gamo%2Bsilent%2Bcat%2Bair%2Brifle&th=1

My neighbors were not very happy, as they had been feeding the damn things, and called the cops on me. the cops showed up to see what was going on, I showed them my license and my air rifle and the state hunting proclamation that shows them as small game birds, so there was nothing they could charge me with. We had a bit of a laugh over it. One of the officers asked where I got the air rifle. so I am sure he went and did the same thing at his house. I went on to kill dozens of the damn things and my neighbors quit feeding them to prevent me from killing more of them.

From what I hear, you can eat pigeon and supposedly it is quite tasty. I have not tried it, but I might the next time the pigeons population gets out of control. Additionally, since I got rid of the pigeons, we have had a resurgence of other birds, like greckles, humming birds, sparrows, etc., which I don't mind. they still poop on stuff, but not like pigeons do.

anonymous coward because I don't want the wrath of PETA or the tree huggers and rock lickers coming down on me, not to mention the anti-gun nuts.

Targeted ads

Readingthe article on my iPad there’s an advert right in the middle.

It has a big button

“GET EARLY BIRD TICKETS”

Humans are a blight on this planet and will soon destroy all but the Tardigrades

Pigeons - Aaaaaarrrghh!!!!

Pigeons - rats with wings. At least with rats, they can be trained and can be clean, but pigeons are the scum of the earth - along with seagulls.

You never see a baby pigeon, they must come out of their eggs fully grown and ready to eat anything. I have seen pigeons with missing toes on one foot and maybe one toe on the other, they walk around quite easily. Its as if they don't need toes to walk around with, I have also seen pigeons with only one leg, and it still hops around. There are pigeons who have dive-bombed the pigeon spikes and survived, and the only thing that has happened is that the spike has gotten flattened, so when one does it, the others watch and do it too and soon the pigeon spikes are all flattened and new spikes are needed. I, personally, think these spikes should be poisoned or electrified so kill the buggers.

Pigeons are the ONLY flying bird that would rather run away from you than fly away.

As to a solution for pigeons, if you don't want to use poison or electrification is to get the rats, teach them to eat pigeon eggs and adult pigeons. You do this by putting a rat into a large bin filled with pigeons and their eggs, after some time they will only eat pigeon eggs. I know this is a little bit Sky-Fall, but the principal is correct, and it should work. And to get rid of the rats, you get a Scottie (West Highland Terrier) doggie. Its best to get one of these little white fluffy dogs which has an attitude problem, they will rip any rat apart.

I know this is a "non-tech" solution, but from experience old tech or non-tech sometimes works better than these new fangled devices what some boffin comes up with.

Its trying to find legal options that's the problem.

If you don't have to worry about the law then an air gun works wonders. They really don't like being shot at because even a .177 pellet can kill them. Unfortunately in the UK you're likely to get a flood of birds of the 'black helicopter' sort if anyone sees you (surprisingly where I live in the US isn't that much different). Raptors might work but I don't know if they like the Great Taste Of Pigeon -- also its surprisingly difficult to catch a pigeon on the wing (I've seen a pigeon evade a diving hawk, they're pretty manoeuvrable when they need to be).

I suspect the problem is that, like rats, they congregate where the food is. If you're neighbours are careless with trash and litter then you can expect all sorts of nuisances, and not just the ones you can readily see.

Finally, looking on the bright side ..... they could be seagulls. They're like larger and more aggressive (and louder) pigeons.

High power air rifle and a cleanup crew for a few weeks

Falcons work as well but are more expensive.

Birds do learn when an area becomes too dangerous for them.

El Reg -

Can't see the point of this article being here. No IT angle at all.

Are you planning to become the "Daily Mail of the IT world", or have you just hired an ex-Daily Mail hack?

So what next.....

You going to start killing dogs and cats too?

https://www.cdc.gov/healthypets/pets/dogs.html

https://www.cdc.gov/healthypets/pets/cats.html

https://www.cdc.gov/rodents/diseases/direct.html

https://www.cdc.gov/healthypets/pets/birds.html

Funny that at the bottom of the list is actually birds (the count being 21,16,11 and 4 in that order).

I couldn't even be bothered to count the diseases humans can give each other.....

When my sisters and I escaped from our mother we rented the top floor of an old house in Vancouver. There were pigeons nesting in a triangular alcove of the roof beside a dormer. There was a giant pile of pigeon poop at the opening of this alcove. What animal shits where it rests? One result of this was a surfeit of those flies that fly around in random patterns inside the house.

Years later I was working on the opera The Cunning Little Vixen (an animal allegory) by Janacek in a Welsh Opera production that at one point featured several housewife chickens in housedresses and aprons leaning on brooms, smoking and cackling. Putting these together my image of pigeons ever since has been of avian rubbies with cigarettes dangling out of their mouths, walking around the sidewalks saying "Got any bread crumbs, bud?"

"Heartbreaking"

I don't think it means what she thinks it means.

It's a pretty easy problem to solve, though. Just give some kids air guns, they'll take care of it.

they could try emptying the bins a bit more regularly they're probably doing bi weekly removals as its environmentally friendly.

Yep more food for vermin.