The Trouble With Pest Birds
Avian Visitors Sometimes Become Problem Birds
Many people love birds and know that they're important in the ecosystem, but sometimes birds come into conflict with humans, becoming bird pests.
Today, many of the world’s birds are in decline, suffering the effects of habitat loss, pesticide poisoning, overhunting, competition for food supplies, lethal obstacles such as cell phone towers and tall buildings appearing in the skies, and many other threats. Some birds, however, have adapted quite well to growing cities and swelling human populations. These birds have healthy populations too, and all too often they create problems with their foraging, roosting, and nesting habits. Bird control and the creation of bird control products is a growing industry.
What are the issues with pest birds?
Birds can create problems for people in many ways, including:
- Bird roosts in human communities cause annoying noise levels, quantities of offensive bird droppings, odor problems, and a risk of disease.
- Birds’ nests plug rain gutters and vents, damage machinery, and create a fire hazard in electrical fixtures.
- Occupied nests of protected species such as swallows and birds of prey often prevent scheduled maintenance of buildings and other structures, and delay construction projects.
- Bird droppings can discolor paint, erode concrete, corrode materials such as copper and steel, and damage plastics.
- Bird droppings can contaminate packaged foods and water supplies.
- Bird droppings sometimes contain organisms that are hazardous to human health, such as the fungal spores of histoplasma.
- Ectoparasites such as mites and ticks can transfer to humans, causing irritation and spreading diseases such as Lyme disease.
- Birds can carry diseases such as avian influenza and West Nile virus that can cause serious disease in humans.
- Birds on airport runways, or flying in the path of aircraft create serious safety issues for aviation.
- Birds eat grain and fruit crops intended for human and livestock consumption.
- Unwanted bird species sometimes monopolize garden feeders, keeping more desirable species away, or consuming all the food.
- Introduced bird species, such as European Starlings in North America, compete with native species for limited nesting sites.
- Territorial birds, such as geese and wild turkeys can become aggressive toward people and sometimes cause significant injury.
Bird controls can help get rid of pest birds.
Many types of bird controls have been developed for dealing with bird problems. Some, such as poisons and fire bombs involve lethal control; however, most people favor methods that exclude or discourage pest birds over killing them. Screens can keep them from nesting and perching; spikes deter them as well; noise makers and devices that deliver a mild electrical shock can stop birds from making themselves at home. Systems of bird birth control are also becoming more common.
Bird problems are often a matter of perspective
It’s important to remember that bird pests aren’t doing it deliberately—they’re just being birds. It’s their natural habits that come into conflict with human designs. Pigeons nest on bridge beams and building ledges because they are natural cliff and cave dwellers. Vultures leave the remains of decaying animal carcasses lying around because they are scavengers. The relationships between birds and infectious agents such as histoplasma have evolved over millennia and are not the fault of birds.
It’s often a matter of perspective. The starlings—pest birds in North America— that roost by the thousands in trees and steal nesting sites from Northern Flickers are declining and are of high conservation concern in the UK. The Peregrine Falcon nest that delays building maintenance is a sign that the species is back from near extinction. The crows carrying West Nile virus suffer higher fatalities than humans do, and play little part in spreading the virus.
In the end it comes down to compromise: it’s usually possible to deal with a bird problem if we just make an effort to understand why birds behave the way they do, and then alter conditions to change that behavior in a given locality.
