Home Invasion

Spring, 2013

       One day last spring my husband and I were outside doing spring things when my husband said, "Where did those come from?" Two pigeons were roosting on the beams above our balcony, then three. Never before had we had any pigeons living on our farm and at first we thought it was sorta cool. At first.
       Soon there were four, and finally five. They cooed and cooed - ceaselessly. We soon discovered that pigeons are rarely quiet. They had fights or played pigeon games on our metal roof making quite a racket with their large pigeon feet. But these were minor intrusions. We became alarmed when they began to make their home deep inside our roof, between the rafters, snuggled up where we never expected or wanted any critter to reside. And our little balcony had become their waste disposal system, making it most unpleasant and creating an ongoing clean-up operation.
       As the summer unfolded pigeon talk became increasingly frequent. We searched the net for more information about pigeons. We discovered that their young stayed in the nest quite a bit longer than most birds, that the squabs, as they're called, are good eating, and that you can catch them at night, blinding them with a flashlight into immobility. My brother-in-law sent a website of pigeon recipes, some of which looked pretty enticing. Pigeons historically  played a huge role in food production and amazing buildings were erected to house them. My husband began to do a fine imitation of the pigeon walk, getting a laugh out of our friends while we sat at the picnic table pigeon watching. But we didn't relish the idea of eating them. We didn't really want to harm them at all. We just wanted them to find a different place to live. The only answer to our dilemma was to destroy their cosy roost by completing the soffit.

     We already had scaffolding in place because our planned and now completed summer project was the erection of new solar panels. So, after removing two pigeon eggs from deep inside the roof, soffit construction began. This was hard work in awkward back wrenching positions. The pigeons looked on and, as the roof began to close in, were encouraged to depart - we thought.       The soffit was nearly complete, only the trim remained, when I looked up and saw pigeon feet walking on the screened in beam. (The screen was there to aerate the roof.)  Now this screen was stapled in with an air gun and was strong because we had previously had a squirrel problem and they had destroyed our screen vents on the other side of the roof. We knew ordinary screen was insufficient. No way was this screen coming down! But my big hearted man grudgingly removed the screws on one panel of the soffit and out popped the pigeon. Yippie, now we could finish up and relax - we thought.
       Several days later while walking past the balcony I heard an almost inaudible peep, peep, peep above my head.  "I think there's baby pigeons in the roof!" I said. My husband was in denial, accused me of hearing things. But on the fourth day I again saw pigeon feet on the screen, baby pigeon feet. On looking over his well constructed soffit, the scaffolding now gone and the acrobatics required to do anything at all not exactly a pleasing thought, my husband said, "too .... bad!" We both felt terrible but also somewhat resigned to being pigeon murderers. "Good thing the grand-girls aren't here," I said, "they'd have us tearing the whole roof apart!"  With this I headed off to town.
       When I got home my husband announced "I got them out!"
       "You did! Great! How?" I said.
       "They walked on the screened beam between the rafters and reached the overhang where there's no insulation, climbed to the peak and down the other side to the old screen the squirrels wrecked and I saw one peeping out the hole. So I made the hole bigger and out one flew, then the other. They're both in the barn loft now."

From our point of view, a happy ending to the pigeon invasion. From the pigeon's point of view? Well they still visit, roosting on the solar panels and doing their thing, but it seems they've found somewhere to winter in the barn. Their babies remained in the loft until they could fly better.  You could practically walk right up to them. They just remained frozen in place.  But I know they survived because I saw seven pigeons circling the barn just the other day. And,  if their future numbers become too great, well, even we have our limit.  There's always that pigeon recipe website.


Update 2014

The pigeons are thriving, maybe better than we'd like. They now number 16 and we're thinking about building a roost to harvest their awesomely good droppings for garden fertilizer. I did say "thinking" though. We have tons of easily accessible sheep manure which makes bird dropping collection seem a bit too much like one of those make work projects. Back to the squab idea, maybe...