Do they work to keep pigeons away? I’m sick of cleaning up their <deleted> and mess on my back deck. Hard to access on a fifth floor overhang so before I try spikes, I want to know if anybody has tried this?

-O

 

The fake owls don't work in my experience. The spikes do, but it's not always easy to get good coverage. 

This works.

Plastic Owls don't work.  after one week the pigeons will be taking a dump on it's head.

 

Don't have pigeons where we live.

Mrs. Shrdlu used to string up old CDs around the balcony thinking they would scare away the birds. I told her that I didn't think that the pigeons would bring CD players, and perhaps if they did they'd like the music on the CDs and we'd never get rid of them.

 

The neighbors had huge plastic hornets on their balcony, but it did not take too long before the pigeons perched atop them. We had a similar experience when we tried plastic owls and snakes.

 

We have spikes on almost all places where a bird could perch and we don't have a pigeon problem any longer.

 

 

25 minutes ago, Etaoin Shrdlu said:

Mrs. Shrdlu used to string up old CDs around the balcony thinking they would scare away the birds. I told her that I didn't think that the pigeons would bring CD players, and perhaps if they did they'd like the music on the CDs and we'd never get rid of them.

 

The neighbors had huge plastic hornets on their balcony, but it did not take too long before the pigeons perched atop them. We had a similar experience when we tried plastic owls and snakes.

 

We have spikes on almost all places where a bird could perch and we don't have a pigeon problem any longer.

 

 

We hired a young man to secure plastic netting from the second story eaves.  It worked.

I use a BB Glock pistol. Haven’t killed one just scares them. 

We have spikes on our roof in the obvious areas, but the birds just find another roof perch.  Can’t spike the entire roof.  Need a crack slingshotter…

What you need is a laser pen.Use it at night when they are settling down to sleep.

It scares them and a few nights in a row will stop them from coming back.

Of course this is like weeding your garden,always new ones showing up.

The plus side is,it is easy to do and no noise .

Killing them may upset people but this way seems harmless.

 

2 things that work:

Nettings

Glue (they won't get stuck because they won't sit on the glue. And even after years, when the rain has washed away all glue, they didn't come back)

Then it spikes or netting, or chicken wire. 

I finally found a solution that’s working for me. I started this post five months ago, I tried everything to get rid of the pigeons from resting in an overhang area on my top floor rear veranda.

As usual, there were about five or six of them about 10 days ago, resting under my eves when I looked out my back bedroom door. I opened the door, grabbed an old black brittle sunbaked croc, and threw it up in the air to scare them off. The croc landed in the middle of where all the pigeons nest on a crossbeam, and got stuck. I haven’t seen them since… There’s plenty of them around my house, but not sitting on my beam anymore!

~O

 

Good result with the Croc.

 

Otherwise, I used spikes before I brought back some "Bird-be-Gone" sticky gel from the US and, using a caulk gun, ran beads of that along their perches under the eaves of the car port. They never returned.

 

I think it can be bought locally, or the local equivalent thereof.

 

Point of note on persistent pigeon messing. In our case, the primary attraction was the dried dog food in dishes. Started moving them inside except for dog feeding times and especially overnight.

On 6/5/2025 at 6:45 AM, connda said:

Don't have pigeons where we live.

 

helpful. thanks for your input.

 

I tried the owl on my balcony. Worked for about one day 🙂 Since then, spikes (and nets when I'm not here for the summer). Not had a problem for at least 7 years now. Pigeons return to their birthplace to nest (so I'm told) which is why it can be very hard to break the cycle. Bloke in the condo above me has the pigeon problem on his balcony now as I see them flyin up and can occasionally hear them. Try and stop them perching anywhere such as A/C units or railings.