[Nhcoll-l] Pigeon mess

[John E Simmons]

Heidi,
A museum I used to work in had a similar issue with pigeons nesting on
building ledges--in this case, made worse by an ornithology curator who was
studying pigeons and who had taken steps to make the ledges more
attractive, rather than less attractive, to the birds. There were large
accumulations of pigeon droppings, old nests, feathers, and eggshells on
the ledges. We were reluctant to use netting or spikes because of their
appearance and because they tend to collect trash. In the course of
investigating other cost-effective ways to make the pigeons go away, I
found the results of a study of pigeon nests on buildings that reported
that if reproduction in the population dipped below about 30% the flock was
likely to move away. Armed with this information, we embarked on a series
of measures beginning with cleaning all the pigeon nests from the ledges.
In this case, the majority of the ledges used for nests were reachable from
the windows on the upper floor of the building, so staff members could
reach the new nests the birds were building with an implement and push them
off the ledges. This strategy reduced nesting success among the flock and
did encourage the birds to nest elsewhere and was successful in the long
run as long as staff members routinely removed new nests.

--John


John E. Simmons
Museologica
128 E. Burnside Street
Bellefonte, Pennsylvania 16823-2010
simmons.johne at gmail.com
303-681-5708
www.museologica.com
and
Adjunct Curator of Collections
Earth and Mineral Science Museum & Art Gallery
Penn State University
University Park, Pennsylvania
and
Instructor, Museum Studies
School of Library and Information Science
Kent State University

On Fri, Aug 18, 2017 at 5:01 AM, Heidi Fourie <hfourie at ditsong.org.za>
wrote:

> Dear everyone,
>
>
>
> The Ditsong: National Museum of Natural History is an old building with
> wide window ledges. Recently we have noticed that the pigeons will nest,
> roost and sit on the ledges making a huge mess. Some of the ledges have
> spikes, but this is an even bigger attraction for the pigeons. The mess has
> become a problem as the pigeons now flock to this specific building. Our
> resident cats we think have enough mice and rats to contend with and the
> pigeons mostly stay up on the fourth floor roof or window ledges.
>
>
>
> Is there a solution for this problem, please any advice will do.
>
> Regards,
>
> Heidi
>
>
>
> Dr H. Fourie (Curator)
>
> Karoo Section
>
> Vertebrate Department
>
> Ditsong: NMNH
>
> P.O. Box 413, Pta, 0001
>
>
>
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