A well-tended garden could easily become an all-you-can-eat opportunity for an opportunistic pigeon, searching for seeds, fruit and anything else it might leave at your bird feeder.
However, there are affordable and sustainable ways to protect yourself from these feathered demons without compromising your outdoor shelter.
Greedy pigeons can not only devour any food intended for smaller birds, but they also leave a trail of unwanted dirt behind them.
Dr Liessa Bowen, American wildlife biology expert at Epic Gardening, has revealed that pigeons can be humanely deterred using shiny objects such as cake pans or CDs.
‘Cake molds are cheap, bright and can be easily hung on trees. Hang several on your fruit trees or along fences where they can spin gently in the breeze,” he said. The express.
Dr Liessa Bowen revealed that hanging used cake tins or old CDs and DVDs can be a cheap and sustainable way to scare away pesky pigeons (file image)
If you have a few cans close together, the noise they make rubbing against each other in slightly stronger winds can also help scare away birds, but the main deterrent is the flashes of light shining on them.
Birds are known to react cautiously to unfamiliar stimuli, often interpreting them as potential dangers.
Dr Bowen added: ‘A single tin of cake may not have much effect on a flock of hungry birds. But 10 cake tins floating around will probably make the birds think twice about landing on your trees.’
If you’re not a cake fan, there are plenty of similar items that would otherwise go to waste that you could use, applying the same theory.
CDs are becoming obsolete in the age of streaming, and vinyl is outselling it as a hipster media. So if you have a bunch of CDs that never get used, you can reuse them as reflective bird deterrents.
A bright tape could also be a viable alternative for concerned gardeners, with the added benefit of being even easier to install, simply tying it to a branch, cage or net. You can even purchase specialized bird repellent tape or tape.
However, like many gardeners are not, solutions to pests are rarely simple, and Dr. Bowen concluded that you may need to get creative and see what works well and what doesn’t.
Some alternative ways to keep birds away include planting white flowers around your garden (this color also indicates danger to some birds) or using sounds such as wind chimes or ultrasonic bird repellents.