Thatched Veranda

We like birds.

DS puts out seeds for them on winter mornings before she feeds herself, let alone anybody else…
She puts out shallow bowls of water, summer & winter, changing them as soon as they freeze over.
Recycling frozen bowls in a sunny veranda.

We have put up half a dozen nest boxes and had lots of success with redstarts.
And 2 hand-made ¼-spherical plaster igloos for swallows.
With no takers yet.

We even like pigeons, within reason.
But more & more pigeons have taken to nesting on the convenient horizontal beam ends under our wide eaves.
We can put up with the noise, the incessant cooing, and the surprisingly noisy wing beats.
But the mess is getting past a joke.
Especially on the once-translucent veranda roof.
Of course pigeons need to relieve themselves, but do they need to do it at home?
And be so prolific?
And couldn't they try to learn how to build a nest which stays together for a while?
My impression is that they just carry a bunch of stuff up there (noisily) then kick it around in the hope it might make a nest.
Whereas mostly it just falls on my veranda.
Which rapidly looks like a thatched cottage.

So, taking advantage of some roofers, here for another job, with ladders of aluminium & nerves of steel, we have put up "Eco-Pics".
Sounds like a green-washing term for what are very nasty-looking spikes which hopefully will dissuade, rather than impale, our pigeony ex-friends.
It seems to work, so far.
I have been able to wash the veranda roof & it stays clean, which is wonderful.

But we are having big pangs of conscience as we see & hear the pigeons making aborted approaches.
And stomping about gloomily in the garden.
I can see I am going to have to build a giant set of pigeon apartments somewhere where the mess won't matter.

Parting thot: "Whatever is begun in anger, ends in shame." - Benjamin Franklin