by Pigeon Patrol | Mar 30, 2026 | Bird Netting, Bird Spikes, Bird Trap, Pigeon Control, Pigeon History, Pigeons, Pigeons in the News
I URGE Wycombe District Council to move away from their barbaric, ineffective and costly proposal to kill pigeons, and to instead consider the humane and intelligent alternatives to reduce the pigeon population humanely.
Lethal culling through the use of birds of prey, etc, will produce some temporary reduction in pigeon population numbers but, just as with the culling of stray dogs in urban environments overseas, the area vacated by the culled pigeons will be taken up by other pigeons, unless the council is prepared to maintain the intensive use of a hawk in perpetuity, all making their proposal an expensive and inhumane solution.
by Pigeon Patrol | Mar 13, 2026 | Bird Netting, crows, Pigeon Control, Pigeons, Pigeons in the News
Alfred Hitchcock couldn’t have choreographed it better.
Every sunset since mid-December, the sky above St. Luke’s Hospital in Fountain Hill turns black with the fluttering swarm of 5,000 to 10,000 crows that fly from feeding grounds around the Lehigh Valley to roost on a nearby wooded knoll.
During their noisy, cawing arrival and even noisier pre-dawn departure — and much of the time between — the large birds have been bombarding the hospital, homes, streets, cars, woods and, yes, residents themselves with the natural end-result of their daylong feedings.
The problem has gotten so noxious that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has been summoned to harass the birds until they roost elsewhere.
Beginning at dusk today, the USDA and members of St. Luke’s security staff will roust the crows with loud explosives and whistling pyrotechnics, and chase them with amplified crow distress calls until theyflee.
“It’s not so much that they’re causing a lot of problems, it’s just that they’re a health hazard. With 5,000 birds, that’s a lot of bird droppings, and that can become a potential health hazard,” said hospital spokesman Steve Andrews.
The most significant health threat from crow droppings is a fungal respiratory disease called histoplasmosis, according to Thomas N. Tomsa Jr., district supervisor for USDA Wildlife Services.
“The spores can become airborne, and this respiratory fungal disease can develop,” Tomsa said.
Though there are no indications that the birds have brought the disease to the wooded area behind the hospital, St. Luke’s officials are taking no chances.
St. Luke’s Security Director John Hrubenak said the hospital installed an amplified distress-call sound system two weeks to chase the birds from the roof, which has ventilation ducts and a helicopter landing pad.
“We didn’t want them hanging around on our heliport. We just didn’t want to take any chances,” Hrubenak said. “Certainly there was concern about a flock flying into the path of a helicopter.”
So far, the distress calls have kept the birds about 300 feet from the roof, he said.
It’s not unusual to see so many crows in one place, according to Kevin J. McGowan, a crow expert at Cornell University. American crows are most noticeable when the short winter day comes to an end. Streams of them can be seen flying high overhead, with a sense of purpose.
Thousands or tens of thousands converge at a winter roost, congregating from as far away as 20 miles. In the ’70s, a flock in Fort Cobb, Okla., was recorded at 2 million.
They like urban areas because the artificial light helps protect them from the great horned owl, their natural enemy, and because urban areas are warmer than the countryside.
Crows that breed near the roost site mix with migrants from thousands of miles away.
Besides raising concerns at St. Luke’s, the birds have created problems for residents living near the wooded knoll and hospital employees using the lower parking lot off Ostrum Street.
The tree-lined path from the front door of Kim Gencarelli’s home at 500 Ostrum St. has turned into a nightly obstacle course.
“You’ll walk out of your house and get hit or nearly hit with their stuff,” Gencarelli said. “In order to keep clean from my door to my car, I need an umbrella.”
The daily bombardment has also taken its toll on cars. The matter had been compounded by voluntary water rationing, which limited car washing.
“On my way to the car wash, I had people staring, pointing and laughing. My car was covered. You really couldn’t see it was brown, it was white,” Gencarelli said.
On nearby Brighton Street, Robert Guerriere finds nightly challenges while walking his dog.
“I have to look up to see exactly where they are so I don’t get dropped on,” Guerriere said.
The birds’ nightly droppings are so prolific, Guerriere said, “It sounds like rain. It’s not fun. It stinks and smells.”
But not all have had their feathers ruffled.
Ed Sinkler, who lives a block from Gencarelli, said birds are supposed to be in the woods and wondered where they would go when they left.
“It’s sort of majestic watching 10,000 crows come in. They make a nice little chorus at 5:30 in the morning,” Sinkler said.
“I wish there was a way to lure them somewhere else. That would be a better solution than to scare them up and let them go. These are woods and … that’s where they’re supposed to be.”
Tomsa acknowledges the birds may make trouble at another location but prefers to address one problem at a time.
Before this year, the birds roosted in the wooded knoll and on the Hill-to-Hill Bridge. But their numbers were only a fraction of what they are this year.
In December, Tomsa said, his agency harassed a similar number of crows that had been dumping all over the Capitol complex in Harrisburg. It took about five nights of harassment to make them fly the coop. Similarly, Tomsa said he expects the birds will be flushed from their Fountain Hill roost by the weekend.
Even though the nightly two-hour bursts of sound should be enough to force the crows to take flight, the noise will be muffled in the hospital and homes and should present a fraction of the nuisance the birds cause, according to Tomsa.
In a letter to Hrubenak, Tomsa wrote that once the birds are gone, they probably won’t return this winter. But they may be back next year.
Pigeon Patrol
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal -friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Bird Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Best Types of Pigeon Repellent
- Bird Spikes– Pigeons can’t land on surfaces with bird spikes—perfect for ledges, sills, signs, and fences.
Shop Bird Spikes: https://www.pigeonpatrol.ca/bird-spikes/
- Bird Sound Deterrents / Ultrasonic Repellers– Emit high-frequency sound to drive pigeons away without harming them.
Browse Ultrasonic Bird Repellers: https://www.pigeonpatrol.ca/bird-repeller/
- Pigeon Netting– Blocks pigeons from accessing nesting zones permanently.
See Pigeon Netting: https://www.pigeonpatrol.ca/bird-netting/
Canada’s top wholesaler for bird deterrent products for twelve consecutive years.
Contact us at 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD, (604) 585-9279 or visit our website at https://www.pigeonpatrol.ca/
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by Pigeon Patrol | Mar 9, 2026 | pet bird, Pigeon Control, Pigeon Droppings, Pigeons, Pigeons in the News
Eighteen frozen pigeons were recently shipped north to the suburban Albany labs of New York State wildlife pathologist Ward Stone. The birds, poisoned by pesticide-spiked rice, were a familiar sight to the medical examiner. He had already autopsied several victims, and this latest batch of corpses, found scattered around a supermarket parking lot in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, put the murder tally in the hundreds – and confirmed Stone’s suspicion that he is on the Carbofuran-laced-birdseed trail of an avian serial killer.
The pigeons were added to a pile of more than 400 New York City birds Stone has examined over the past two years. He’s been cataloguing causes of death in our 126-species bird habitat, and his pigeon report joined a folder filled with more exotic necropsies: a Jamaica Bay loon with its waterproofing washed away by detergent; a swan found in Central Park Lake with a lead sinker stuck in its gizzard; two red-tailed hawks from Mary Tyler Moore’s building; and a black-crowned night heron from Prospect Park loaded with four pesticides.
Besides the vigilante avicides and high-profile mortalities, Stone has examined dozen
s of birds killed by the commercial agent Avitrol, used legally by exterminators all over the city. “You can get caught up in the ‘Carbofuran Killer,’ but Avitrol is what’s killing most of the birds in New York City,” argues anti-Avitrol activist Mary Kelly, whose outrage at the sight of dead pigeons plopping to the pavement from lofty aeries on York and 86th Street in 1997 prompted Stone’s larger inquiry. After autopsying Kelly’s birds, Stone recommended a statewide ban on Avitrol (his employers at the state Department of Environmental Conservation issue licenses to exterminators). He has also found the toxic substance in at least one peregrine falcon – evidence, he says, that the agent is passed to other birds up the food chain, since peregrines love pigeon pie.
Thanks to Stone and Kelly, avian awareness has roosted in Albany: An Avitrol-ban bill flew through the State Assembly last year but crashed in the Senate under pesticide-lobby pressure. This year’s version would have given individual localities the right to ban the pesticide, but Governor Pataki clipped the bill’s wings when he vetoed it at the end of July.
Stone’s activism also prompted wildlife rehabilitators, bird-loving bureaucrats, and other nature freaks to begin scooping and sending the dead crows, starlings, and grackles in their neighborhoods and parks, and Stone plans to release his first-ever comprehensive city bird-necropsy report shortly. He says he was surprised at the “incredible array” of local birds he encountered, “much more than a country boy like me could have expected,” and cites improved water quality – hell, there are cormorants cruising in the Gowanus Canal – as a critical factor in maintaining the city’s “splendiferous” habitat.
The pathologist has lost track of the number of times he’s been compared to seventies television hero Quincy, M.E., but he has his own unsolved mysteries to take care of: Those Brooklyn birds, it turns out, were done in by a copycat using a different pesticide (Methomyl) and bait than the Carbofuran Killer. Still, says the scientist, a bit optimistically, “only two purposeful poisoners in a city of millions – that’s not bad.”
Pigeon Patrol
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal -friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Bird Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Best Types of Pigeon Repellent
- Bird Spikes– Pigeons can’t land on surfaces with bird spikes—perfect for ledges, sills, signs, and fences.
Shop Bird Spikes: https://www.pigeonpatrol.ca/bird-spikes/
- Bird Sound Deterrents / Ultrasonic Repellers– Emit high-frequency sound to drive pigeons away without harming them.
Browse Ultrasonic Bird Repellers: https://www.pigeonpatrol.ca/bird-repeller/
- Pigeon Netting– Blocks pigeons from accessing nesting zones permanently.
See Pigeon Netting: https://www.pigeonpatrol.ca/bird-netting/
Canada’s top wholesaler for bird deterrent products for twelve consecutive years.
Contact us at 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD, (604) 585-9279 or visit our website at https://www.pigeonpatrol.ca/
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by Pigeon Patrol | Mar 8, 2026 | Bird Netting, Bird Trap, Pigeon Control, Pigeons, Pigeons in the News
Many bird species are attracted to landfills which take domestic or putrescible waste. These sites provide a reliable, rich source of food which can attract large concentrations of birds. The birds may cause conflicts with human interest with respect to noise, birds carrying litter off site, possible transmission of pathogens in bird droppings and the potential for birdstrikes. In the UK there is an 8 mile safeguarding radius around an airfield, within which any planning applications must pass scrutiny from regulatory bodies to show they will not attract birds into the area and increase the birdstrike risk. Peckfield Landfill site near Leeds, West Yorkshire was chosen for a trial of a netting system designed to exclude birds from domestic waste landfills. The site was assessed for bird numbers before the trial, during the netting trial and after the net had been removed. A ScanCord net was installed for 6 weeks, during which time all household waste was tipped inside the net. Gull numbers decreased on the site from a mean of 107
4 per hourly count to 29 per hourly count after two days. The gull numbers increased again after the net had been removed. Bird concentrations in the surroundings were also monitored to assess the effect of the net. Bird numbers in the immediate vicinity of the landfill site were higher than those further away. When the net was installed, the bird concentrations adjacent to the landfill site decreased. Corvids were not affected by the net as they fed on covered waste which was available outside the net throughout the trial. This shows that bird problems on a landfill site are complex, requiring a comprehensive policy of bird control. A supporting bird scaring system and clear operating policy for sites near to airports would be required.
Pigeon Patrol
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal -friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Bird Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Best Types of Pigeon Repellent
- Bird Spikes– Pigeons can’t land on surfaces with bird spikes—perfect for ledges, sills, signs, and fences.
Shop Bird Spikes: https://www.pigeonpatrol.ca/bird-spikes/
- Bird Sound Deterrents / Ultrasonic Repellers– Emit high-frequency sound to drive pigeons away without harming them.
Browse Ultrasonic Bird Repellers: https://www.pigeonpatrol.ca/bird-repeller/
- Pigeon Netting– Blocks pigeons from accessing nesting zones permanently.
See Pigeon Netting: https://www.pigeonpatrol.ca/bird-netting/
Canada’s top wholesaler for bird deterrent products for twelve consecutive years.
Contact us at 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD, (604) 585-9279 or visit our website at https://www.pigeonpatrol.ca/
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by Pigeon Patrol | Jun 26, 2025 | Animal Deterrent Products, Bird Deterrent Products, Pigeon Control, Pigeon Patrol's Services, Pigeons, Solar Panel Bird Proofing, Sparrows
Solar panels are an excellent investment—but they also attract unwanted tenants: pigeons. Birds love to nest underneath panels because they provide warmth, shade, and protection from predators.
If left unchecked, bird activity can lead to clogged gutters, wiring damage, reduced energy efficiency, and thousands in repairs. The good news? With proper solar panel bird proofing, you can protect your solar system and prevent infestations—all without harming the birds.
Why Do Birds Nest Under Solar Panels?
- Warm, Sheltered Space
Solar panels create the perfect microclimate—warm, dry, and shaded.
- Safety from Predators
Being under panels keeps pigeons out of reach of cats, hawks, and raccoons.
- Easy Access to Nesting Materials
Nearby trees, garbage, or roof gardens provide ample nesting material.
Dangers of Bird Nesting Under Solar Panels
- Wiring Damage – Birds chew and pull on cables
- Fire Risk – Nesting materials are flammable
- Reduced Efficiency – Debris and droppings cause panel shading
- Roof Damage – Moisture and droppings cause corrosion and leakage
- Health Hazards – Pigeon droppings carry histoplasmosis and salmonella
Solar Panel Bird Proofing Products
1. Bird Netting and Solar Mesh Guards
The most effective solution is to install UV-stabilized mesh or netting around the perimeter of the solar array.
Shop Bird Netting Here: https://www.pigeonpatrol.ca/bird-netting/
Benefits:
- Keeps birds from entering underneath panels
- Blends with roof aesthetics
- Weatherproof and long-lasting
- Can be DIY-installed or professionally fitted
2. Bird Spikes for Edges and Frames
Install spikes along the outer edge of solar panels to prevent birds from landing or walking around the system.
Explore Bird Spikes: https://www.pigeonpatrol.ca/bird-spikes/
Best for:
- Lower panel edges
- Surrounding rooftop ledges
- Gutter edges below panels
3. Ultrasonic Bird Repellers
Ultrasonic bird repellers emit high-frequency sound that’s unpleasant for birds but inaudible to humans.
Browse Ultrasonic Repellers: https://www.pigeonpatrol.ca/bird-repeller/
Use alongside netting for added protection.
How to Install Bird Proofing for Solar Panels
Step 1: Clean the Area
Remove all bird nests, droppings, and debris. Disinfect the area thoroughly.
Step 2: Install Mesh or Netting
Use solar mesh clips or roof-friendly fasteners to secure netting around the perimeter of the solar panel system.
Step 3: Add Bird Spikes or Repellers
Install spikes on exposed edges or install a repeller unit to deter future roosting attempts.
Step 4: Regular Maintenance
Inspect the proofing system every 6–12 months for wear and tear, especially after heavy storms.
Who Needs Solar Panel Bird Proofing?
- Homeowners with Rooftop Solar
Especially in urban or suburban areas with high pigeon populations.
- Commercial Properties with Solar Arrays
Warehouses, retail plazas, schools, or hospitals with rooftop solar systems.
- Solar Panel Installers & Property Managers
Protect client investments and reduce callbacks for bird-related service issues.
Combine Bird Proofing for Best Results
| Solution |
Purpose |
| Bird Netting |
Blocks access beneath panels |
| Bird Spikes |
Prevents landing or perching |
| Ultrasonic Devices |
Covers larger roof areas |
| Regular Cleaning |
Removes attraction sources (food, nesting material) |
Can birds damage solar panels?
Yes. Birds can damage wiring, reduce efficiency, and cause expensive roof damage.
What is the best way to bird-proof solar panels?
The most effective method is mesh or netting around the perimeter, combined with bird spikes and ultrasonic deterrents.
How long does solar panel bird proofing last?
Pigeon Patrol’s mesh and netting systems are rated for 5–10 years or longer.
Will this hurt the birds?
No. All products are humane, non-toxic, and environmentally safe.
Bird-proofing your solar panels is a small investment that protects your energy system, roof, and health. Whether you’re a homeowner or a building manager, the best time to act is before pigeons move in.
Shop bird control products now at: https://www.pigeonpatrol.ca
This dramatic increment in flock size confirmed that the city council’s lethal control policy, operated between 1963 and 1985, had not only been totally ineffective, but had actually resulted in an increase in flock size of nearly one third. As a result, the city council realized that the problem had to be tackled at source