Plastic Bird Spikes

How to Keep Pigeons off Your Balcony

One of the major pest birds is the pigeon.  Although pigeons may be fun to watch and even feed at the local park or town square, you definitely don't want a flock of them hanging around your house all the time.  In fact, you don't even want one or two there for very long!  Pigeons can cause all kinds of problems, the main ones being noise and a mess.

Before we get into how to keep the pigeons off the balcony, it helps to know a little bit about why they want to be there.  Pigeons, like other birds thrive in places where humans are – towns and cities.  The reason is because there is lots of easy food around and very few predators.  Although they could easily nest in a tree if they wanted to, the truth is that  it is much more convenient and safe for them to camp out on your balcony or windowsill.

The problem with this is that they are also pests.  They annoy people with their non-stop cooing in the wee hours of the morning and during the day.  What's worse, they poop all over the place, turning your nice balcony into a disgusting mess.  Fortunately, there are some easy ways to keep them at bay.

The first thing that you want to do is to make sure they can't land on the railing or ledge.  Pigeons will land on either a flat ledge or a thin railing, and you need to prevent this.  The easiest way to do it is to simply get yourself some bird spikes.  These are long, thin strips that you glue or tie onto the railing.  For a thin metal railing, you can either glue or tie them on.  For a thick cement railing, you will most likely need to glue them down.  They work because thin spikes stick out of the strip, which makes it impossible for the rascally birds to land on.

As far as the type of spikes you get, from a functional point of view, it doesn't really matter.  Both plastic or metal bird spikes will do the same job of deterring the pigeons and other birds from landing.  The difference is in how they look.  The plastic spikes are meant to have low visibility, which means you won't notice them as much.  The stainless steel spikes will reflect light and be visible to everyone.

Of course, the plastic bird spikes will only work for keeping the pigeons off the ledge or railing.  Once in a while if people aren't present for a long time pigeons will decide to set up a nest on the balcony floor itself.  This is actually a worse problem, since you will wind up with an even bigger mess.  If birds are landing on the floor of your balcony, or on any other furniture you have there, your best bet is to get yourself some bird netting.  You can get a low-visibility bird net that will wrap around your entire balcony.  Although this isn't the best thing when you want to use your balcony, but you can set them up so that the net is easier to take on and off.