Many people find that feeding pigeons can be great fun. It’s calm and peaceful to be able to sit there, tossing out bits of bread and seeds, and watch the birds collect and eat it all off the ground. Unfortunately, if you own a piece of property, it’s not quite as much fun for you.

For property owners, pigeons are pests, just as much as rats and insects. They leave their droppings all over the place, making it incredibly messy and forcing you to pay high dollars in cleaning up. They also molt all over everything, leaving feathers and other debris laying around. And the more they’re fed on your property, the more of them will gather there looking for food. So how can you ensure that you can get rid of pigeons? We were able to get some tips on pest control for pigeons from an expert, and here’s what we learned…

First and foremost, try to ensure you don’t have any places for them to perch. If you’re building new construction, that’s easy enough. But if you’ve purchased an already standing building, it may not be so easy. Still, you can do a number of things to discourage perching. Try to ensure there are no easy ledges, and if you do have easy ledges try getting rid of them. You can also try laying down small metal spikes. Make sure you don’t leave enough room between the spikes for smaller birds to perch, though! Otherwise, you’ll simply trade one pest for another.

In addition, you can try to make certain to keep your property clean. This can be done in a number of ways. Having plenty of trash bins can help, as the harder it is to find a trash bin the more likely it is that people will drop their trash on the ground. Ensure that the trash bins are enclosed, so that pigeons can’t simply fly into them and get food that way. It may also help to ensure you have people cleaning the property regularly. This helps make certain that you won’t have any problems with food staying around for long periods of time.

If your property has any small nooks and crannies, make sure they’re filled! These are places where pigeons might decide to make a nest, or worse yet, decide to go when they’re ready to die. If you make sure that you don’t give them enough space to make a nest, that will go a long way to keeping them off your property. So either make sure you don’t leave small gaps like that in your construction, or if you must, then try sealing those gaps up after the fact.

Ultimately, keeping pigeons off your property is nearly impossible. Wild animals will go where they want, and this is especially true of wild animals that can fly. However, if you take the appropriate steps, you can help ensure that very few of them congregate on your property. Dealing with fewer pigeons instead of an entire flock of them can go a long way to keeping your property sanitary.