Pigeon warfare
05 September 2025For various reasons I had been absent from my own apartment for extended periods long before relocating to Manchester for a new job and in my absence had problems with pigeons coming on to the balcony. And shitting everywhere they perch. What they leave behind is both unpleasant and a health hazard which is not easy to clean up, but under UK law simply eliminating the offending vermin is not legal and even if it wasn't there is still the question of how to do it as shooting is out of the question. All I could do was move the furniture inside after disinfecting them and strapping pigeon spikes to all the surfaces I thought they would perch.
There was only so long I could keep all the outdoor furniture inside and even with all the extra spikes they eventually returned and found somewhere to mess up. They never went back to the corner I had applied liberal amounts of anti-pigeon chemicals but I suspect these eventually dispersed and putting spikes and chemicals everywhere was not a practical solution as it would be as much a danger to myself and friends as the pigeons. I am told one solution is keeping the lights on but the low-energy bulbs burnt out so no idea if this would have worked, but I had had enough so decided to change tack.
Had enough
Time down south at the time was in short supply so I was not going to do a rinse-repeat of cleaning up the balcony just for the same thing to happen again, and the time the mess was already remaining in place was liklely causing extra damage and certainly made it more hazardous due to it drying out to a powder. Would not surprise me if the cleaning agents themseleves were also causing further unseen damage, and because of the biohazard much of the stuff used in cleaning was thrift-store stock that was disposed of afterwards. I finally concluded that the only practical solution was to keep the pigeons off the balcony entirely as trying to deprive them of convenient landing points had not worked.
I managed to get hold of pigeon netting and scratch together two spare afternoons to put it in place but the results felt make-shift. The netting came in a single rolled-up 5-by-5 meter piece which was a pain to cut into the right-sized pieces before putting into place, and even it was clearly wonky with the netting far from the ideal horizontal and vertical strands. And that was before considering whether the adhesive cable-tie anchors would last long stuck to brickwork. Even if they did last there was still the gap at the bottom of the railings where pigeons could still walk in.
This solution closed off the big area above the railing where pigeons would typically fly in and was coupled with some lights on timers, but in short it felt like a bodge job and I also wanted it to be an impossibility for pigeons to ever land on the balcony again. Even before leaving it was already decided that this would be an iterative process of finding out what worked in both effectiveness and appearance, with this being my major project for the next weeks if not months.
First revision
Later in the month after the netting was installed there was a bank holiday weekend which for better or worse was also booked to spend down south and this gave an opportunity to evaluate and refine the anti-pigeon measures. Even before leaving previously I was not happy with the results but had decided to experiment with one alcove rather than go ahead and order in stuff for all four, in part because this life-improvement project was more than just about outcome and I did not want to go all-in on an unknown solution. Aside from adjusting timers the lighting was left as-is as to me they were a secondary measure.Redoing the fence
As an experimental iteration the netting was cut back to only reach down to the top of the fence, and the fence itself covered with 25mm 19-guage galvanised mesh wire which by being rigid was easier to handle than the netting — not easy but certainly less of an effort to install.. The original intention was to attach it to the outside of the fence but it was immediately obvious that the need to fully flatten it out made this difficult, and bought with it the risk of dropping it onto the street which is seven floors down. Positioning was far from but visually it looked like a cleaner job and unlike the netting sealed off the gap at the bottom of the fence. In the process the spikes were removed from the top of the fence since they were redundant for their intended purpose and now caused rather than solved problems.
The mesh wire at roughly £15 per square meter is rather expensive for what it is but decided to stick with it rather than try alternatives since I at least knew what to do and expect, so the “prototype” was later extended to the other three alcoves. Was fortunate to be able to set aside a sprinkling of days within a six-week period and these days were the real cost since there are other things competing for this spare time.
Redoing the netting
There was still the issue of the netting in the gap above the fence especially against the uneven brickwork where the sticky cable-tie anchors were not up to the task. Where some had come loose there were gaps where pigeons may well have got in — there was some pigeon mess but was unsure whether it was new or simply not cleaned up when the netting was installed. The ultimate problem was there being nothing properly secure anchoring the middle of the netting to the brickwork and this provided somewhere a pigeon could conceivable squeeze through. This issue was going to be left until the next visit but then as a further experiment a piece of off-cut mesh was used to provide a rigid siding and the netting was cable-tied to this off-cut.
A last moment thought that was put into action as the off-cut was at hand and would otherwise be going to waste, but even as a proof-of-concept it allowed the netting to be trimmed which made it look better than before. It would have been better to attach the netting to the mesh using wire rather than cable ties but by this stage I had all but decided in the longer-term that the netting needed to be completely redone anyway. This was a nothing-to-lose experiment with off-cuts that would be disposed of otherwise.
Bye bye netting
Another visit, another iteration. Use of netting had to all intents and purposes been deemed a failure because even through using off-cut as a frame in itself worked, it was easier and cleaner to do away with the netting entirely in favour of an all-mesh solution. Realistically the netting needed to be taken to a field where it could be staked down and properly cut into right-sized pieces, but this would have to be done off-site which would be logistically prohibitive. A suspected problem with the adhesive anchors is that they are only effective when the applied tension is close to perpendicular, but with the ill-fitted netting the corners would have had tension nearer to 45° and this would explain the resulting gaps.
Installation of a single piece of mesh covering the entire height of an alcove was considered but this would have had the complication of having to be on the outside of the fence to stop pigeons perching on the top where the spikes used to be. Using seperate pieces for top and bottom was far easier to handle and allowed them to be partially secured before the point in which dropping them would result in them falling outward to the street below rather than inward to the balcony.
Miraculously coverage by netting over the far end alcove had remained entirely intact which was likely due to it being the only piece of netting that was well-fitted. In the longer-term plan is to replace this netting as well but for the time being a piece of off-cut was used to seal the gap under the fence, which was very much a get-the-job-done soution as the furniture piled up that end made access difficult particularly with also having to avoid pigeon mess in that area. Intention is to clean the decking before kneeling down and tidying up the lower parts of the alcoves.
Given up on the adhesive
I eventually gave in and decided that adhesive anchor pads were not up to the task as they had become detached on two of the three meshed-off alcoves, but mindful of the potential trouble down the line with what constitutes building &ldq;modifications’ decided to drill into the cement rather than the bricks themselves on the basis that filling a hole in cement would be far easier to patch up inconspiciously than a hole in brick-work. At least that is the hope and in hindsight should have done this from the outset. I had wanted to avoid any drilling but it was not working out and this ongoing project is one that needed to be closed out and other things moved onto.
