Pigeons

[kathryn]

When i first got my garden a couple of years ago, i was delighted to have any bird visiting the garden, however now the pigeons have taken over, they eat all the birdseed, frighten off the other birds and only seem to visit my garden...All the other gardens near to me get all kinds of bird life but I just seem to be getting these big pesky pests...any help gratefully appreciated

[kathryn]

[keef]

Are they wood pigeons ?

Pigeon breast is very very tasty :P very dark meat and kind of like fillet steak in texture, but i would'nt eat ferral pigeon though.

[telboy]

Sky rats!
Do as keef says, shoot 'em - they are vermin, but do eat the breasts of the
'woodies'.

[katynewbie]

???

That must be awful.

Do pigeons have a sense of smell? Foxes are scared off by the smell of human hair, apparently. Maybe you could scatter cat fur about the plot?

Probably a dumb idea...

;D

[mc55]

I've heard that they are frightened away by red & white striped tape (the stuff that looks like the Police Crime Scene tape) - tie lots of it to posts around your lottie ... doesn't look very attractive though  :-\

[busy_lizzie]

All my brassicas have to be netted as we have a terrible problem with pigeons.  They can really decimate some crops.  Red and white striped tape, you say...... we have enough vandalism on our site to warrant the real thing! busy_lizzie

[Robert_Brenchley]

Same on our site. I didn't get them netted last year due to illness, and lost the lot. I really must organise some decent cages for them; some people on the site have quite elaborate constructions, often permanent ones.

[MrsKP]

i've taken to putting seed only in feeders that the smaller birds can use and the pigeons just scratch around on the floor after the bits that are chucked out.  As soon as i fill the bird tables the bullies appear and eat the lot so I've pretty well got two redundant bird tables now which is a shame.

My first year of planting things so I've no experience of what will be attacked by what, so it's going to be fleece, polythene, bit of netting and a machine gun at the ready.

;D

[littlegem]

we feed birds in our garden and we have pigeons, wood pigeons and collared doves amongst the spuggies and starlings, not one of my crop was touched by them last year (just the cabbage butterflies  :(), and they were very close to feeders!, maybe we gave them enough seed and stuff, who knows?!?!?