After a first round of nest removals a few weeks ago I thought I had vanquished our pigeons.
Of course, it only took me a few hours to figure out that I hadn't done a good enough job to really prevent our persistent pigeons from returning.
Now, several weeks later, I am again in the position of thinking that I have permanently eliminated the possibility pigeons infesting our eaves. Though, as was the case last time, my hubris will surely lead to my defeat.
One eventuality that I was hoping to avoid by removing the nests so early after the melt was that I would be removing a nest filled with eggs. Not surprisingly, when I did the first round of nest removals my wishes came true and there were no eggs in the nests.
Yesterday, almost immediately, I learned that I wouldn't be so luck the next time around. The pigeons, in just a few days, had not only constructed a nest but also deposited an egg.
For some reason I was careful with the nest and egg as I removed them. I managed to get the whole package down the ladder without much disturbance. For no apparent reason, I then handed the egg-filled nest to Jeannette
The sad reality is that as soon as I removed the nest from the eaves the egg was doomed to never come to fruition. Of course, as much as Jeannette knew this in her head she very much disliked the idea of throwing a more or less fully formed nest with egg in the trash (even though the handless pigeons could do nothing save the already doomed attempt at offspring).
Once I went back up the ladder to continue the twig removal I learned that I was not removing one nest, but two. It seems that the pigeons had actually built their nest over the nest of much smaller birds. And had it not been for the pigeon nest I would likely not have been motivated to remove the second, smaller nest (this one with two eggs).
These too went in the trash.
Once these nests were removed I added the new chicken wire. Hopefully my aggressive application of the stuff will be enough to keep future potential residents away. In reality what it will likely do is move birds from this site to other sites in our eaves. Maybe once we've finished this game of musical nesting sites I'll have wrapped all of my eaves in chicken wire and staple gun staples.
My ladder-loaning neighbour's sake I hope it doesn't come to that (though it is definitely the case that he and his wife are very much in favour of my attempts to rid our house of pigeons).
Though considering that as of last night the pigeons were on our other neighbours chimney across from their former nesting site surveying the situation does not really suggest that they have accepted defeat and are looking for new, distant nesting site.
The fact that they were there again this morning really doesn't bode well for the "they'll move far away once their nest has been removed" hypothesis.
Oh, and then later in the day when I was dealing with our newly established compost bin I found another dead bird.
