Bird & Pigeon Control

Worth stating plainly and near the top, because these are the points where this trade most often goes wrong.

An active nest is left alone. Eggs or young in it means it stays until it is naturally finished — whatever the species. For protected natives that is a legal matter. For everything else it is simply how the work should be done, and sealing a void with young inside it produces exactly the odour and remediation problem you would expect.

We do not poison or shoot birds. Any species, any situation. The methods here are physical.

We do not guess at species. If it is not clearly a pigeon, starling or house sparrow, the identification gets settled before anything is planned.

Heavy droppings accumulations are not a cleaning job. A modest amount on a ledge is straightforward. A long-standing accumulation in an enclosed space is remediation work with its own equipment and its own precautions, and where that is what you have, you need somebody set up for it. We will tell you that rather than under-doing it.

Raptors, owls, swallows and anything obviously native get treated as protected until established otherwise. Swallows in particular catch people out, because their nests appear quickly on the sides of buildings and the instinct is to knock them down.

Swifts and swallows in particular are worth pausing over, because they nest on the sides of buildings in ways that look exactly like a pigeon problem to somebody who is not looking closely, and because their nesting period is short enough that waiting it out is frequently a realistic plan rather than an indefinite one.

And bats are not birds. If what is in the eaves turns out to have fur, that is a different situation with its own protections — see wildlife removal, where the same principle applies and where the seasonal timing constraints are, if anything, stricter still.

The building stock across this route has a consistent set of bird sites, and knowing them shortens both the inspection and the quote.

Behind and on top of signage. The single most common commercial site in this region. Illuminated signs are warm, the space behind a sign face is enclosed and sheltered, and the top edge is a perfect ledge. On a highway property this is usually where the problem starts.

Fuel canopies and covered walkways. Structural steel, cross-members and the junction where the canopy meets a column are all landing and nesting sites, and the droppings land directly on the area customers walk through.

Warehouse and shop rafters. Where a roll-up door is open through the working day, birds come in and roost on the structure. This is one of the most common industrial bird situations in the Basin, and it is frequently solved at the doorway rather than in the roof.

Agricultural buildings and anything holding grain. Feed and stored commodity attract birds continuously rather than seasonally. Gins, elevators, feed storage and barns all carry it, and the bird problem and the rodent problem are usually the same problem with the same cause.

Oilfield structures and equipment housings. Enclosed, sheltered, warm, and often unattended for long stretches. Birds nesting inside equipment is a maintenance issue before it is an aesthetic one.

Residential soffits, gable vents and the roof edge. On the older housing stock across this route — median construction in the sixties and seventies in most of these towns — soffit and fascia are frequently the softest part of the building envelope, and a small gap becomes a nest site.

Chimneys and flues. Uncapped, they are a nesting shaft. Capping is one of the few genuinely simple fixes on this list.

Solar panels. The void beneath the array is sheltered, shaded and almost never inspected. It has become one of the more common new bird sites on residential property, and under-panel screening is a well-established piece of work.

Bird problems are unusual in this trade for being almost entirely preventable, and for getting disproportionately more expensive the longer they run. Both facts are worth acting on.

A new site is cheap to close. A pair of birds assessing a soffit gap, a single nest starting behind a sign, a few droppings appearing on one section of a canopy — at that stage the job is a small piece of screening or a short run of spike. Nobody calls at that stage, because it does not look like a problem yet.

An established site is a project. Birds return to successful nesting sites and bring the next generation with them. Two seasons later the same building has multiple roosts, an accumulation that needs proper remediation, an associated insect population, and an installation that has to cover far more surface. The work is the same kind of work; there is simply several times as much of it.

So the useful moment is early. If you have noticed birds starting to use a building, that is the call. It is a smaller quote and a shorter job than the one available in eighteen months.

And there is a maintenance angle worth folding in. Capping a chimney, screening a gable vent, closing a soffit gap and screening under a solar array are all things that also serve rodent exclusion and moisture control. If any of that is being done on a building anyway, doing the bird-proofing at the same time costs very little extra and saves a separate visit.

For commercial property, the same logic applies with an added inspection dimension: droppings on a walkway or a service area are a finding waiting to happen, and dealing with them on a plan is considerably cheaper than dealing with them on a deadline.

Identification first. Which species, and whether there is an active nest. Everything else follows from those two answers, and neither is negotiable.

Then the survey. Where they are landing, where they are roosting overnight, and where they are nesting — which are frequently three different places. The droppings map tells you most of this, which is why it is worth leaving alone until the survey is done.

Then the plan and the quote. What gets netted, what gets spiked, what gets screened and what gets closed, with the reasoning for each. Bird work is quoted per installation rather than per visit, because the deliverable is a physical thing that stays there.

Then the timing question. If there is an active nest, the work waits for it, and we will say when that is likely to be. If the roost is long-established, the associated insect issue is planned into the sequence.

Then the installation. Physical, permanent, and specified for the surface — because a spike system fixed with the wrong adhesive to a hot metal ledge in this sun is a spike system on the ground by August.

And then a check. Birds relocate when a surface becomes unusable, and where they relocate to is worth knowing — sometimes it is off the property, and sometimes it is twenty feet along the same building, which means the next phase is already identified.

What we will not do is sell you a device we expect to stop working. If the honest answer for your building is netting rather than a cheaper deterrent, that is the recommendation even though it is the larger quote, because the cheaper option would have to be done twice.