The Birds Are Back

It's finally spring and that means that means the annual return of many species of birds to Regina.  Unfortunately, it has also meant the return of two undesirable types of birds to our house and yard.

The first type of undesirable bird to return were those of the dead variety.  So far I've found four dead birds in just the past few days.  Even more unfortunately, I've now also found my first dead robin AKA first dead bird of any real size.  I'm really hoping that these four are it for this trend this year.

The second type of undesirable birds to return this year are the pigeons.

A weekend or two ago we first heard the pleasant and distracting coos of pigeons roosting just outside of our bedroom window.  Since then it has become a relatively regular occurrence.  Maybe the most unfortunate development associated with the return of the pigeons is that they've started hanging out in the roof above our front porch - something we'd really like to discourage.

This morning I finally got around to putting up some of the mesh we used last year to discourage pigeon/miscellaneous bird roosting.  Unfortunately, because prominence (i.e. the front porch) Jeannette was reasonably hesitant to ensconce the works of it in anti-bird mesh.

This reasonable position finally motivated us to look for anti-pigeon spikes that had been recommended to us last year by our neighbours' friend.

At $10 a foot, these spikes are a little more expensive than I'd hoped, but they look as though they'll be a little easier to install and will hopefully be a little less noticeable than wrapping everything in mesh.

Of course, there are still likely to be at least a few locations where mesh will be our only option.

Fortunately for my laziness, it's started raining.  Now I'll be able to put spike installation off until at least tomorrow (though it really should be done as soon as possible so the pigeons don't develop more of a taste for our eaves and porch than they already have).