Bird Management

Bird control problems are more varied and numerous than most people would imagine, and the number of techniques and products available to solve them is equally mind-boggling. Here are a number of excellent ideas and suggestions to make bird-fighting PCOs' lives a lot easier.

Shakespeare once wrote that we should first kill all the lawyers. Had he been a property manager rather than a playwright, he might instead have written that we should first kill all the architects. It's architects, after all, who keep bird control companies in business. I really like these professionals, and pest control operators should, too. Architects' unfortunate short-term visualization of a building in regard to future problems that might be caused by birds and other pests definitely causes a lot of headaches for building owners.

This article deals with two aspects of bird control. The first part, "The Birds," discusses bird-proofing products I have used in the past and have found to be effective. The second part, "The Birds, Unplugged," is aimed primarily at pest control professionals who have done little or no bird control. In it, I explain some methods that can get you involved in bird control immediately with simple supplies and tools from the hardware store.

THE BIRDS. You may want to review an article I wrote for PCT that appeared in the May 1992 issue, "Bird Control Using Electric Fence Technology," if you are not familiar with this particular bird control technique. My company uses electric fence technology on approximately 90% of the bird jobs we do. However, I look at a project with my client's best interests in mind, and sometimes the electric fence may not be the most appropriate method to solve the problem.

The first approach to bird control is to inspect the property. Sometimes with birds such as starlings, sparrows and pigeons, inspecting the property a short while before the sun sets gives you a better idea of the type of birds involved, how they are approaching the building, and how they are roosting on the building. This inspection may be done after the initial walk-through of the property, when you discuss the concerns and needs of the customer.

The next step is to develop a proposal to solve the problem that fits the customer's budget and desires. Sometimes the customer may just want one doorway cleared of roosting pigeons; or they may want pigeons eliminated from the entire building. Your contract needs to clearly specify the customer's objectives.

The next step is to select and install the appropriate bird control product. With most urban bird problems, you are being contacted because of roosting and nesting on the building.

I once bid a bird control job giving the product option of either the electric fence or Nixalite. The architect wanted us to use Nixalite because he was familiar with the product. Nixalite has worked well in this area for more than two years. We have not even had to clean out the Nixalite spines, because the pigeons have never returned to this location, even though pigeons do roost in the vicinity. I have also installed Nixalite on a home that had sparrows landing on a ledge on top of a window. The product worked well, and the client, after six months, remains satisfied. The product is not very noticeable in this location, which pleases the customer.

Nixalite is stainless steel, "porcupine-like" wire, and will last forever. Some hints to make your installation go faster:

• The small Phillips head metal fastening screws provided with the Nixalite product may not attach to your application surface. You may have to be creative and find a better screw that is self-drilling for metal surfaces, or that can be used in stone if a guide-hole is pre-drilled. It needs to work with the brackets that are available in the Nixalite package.

• It is a good idea to pre-drill some holes in the area to determine what fastening devices are appropriate before you rent boom lifts or scaffolds. One job necessitated our building a scaffold. It was performed on one of the coldest days of the winter. The metal was very difficult to drill. It was a project that I thought would take one day, but lasted two. We had to use a stubby metal bit to pre-drill the holes, and then a self-drilling hex-head screw to rotate and secure the brackets into place.

On the home sparrow job mentioned earlier, I used 3-inch #10 hex-head metal screws and pre-drilled the holes horizontally in between the mortar on the bricks. I did not even use the brackets. The screws held the Nixalite in place.

I have not worked with other porcupine wire-type materials. I imagine that with most of them, attachment is again one of the most labor-intensive aspects of the jobs. Another difficulty would be getting to the ledge where the product needs to be applied. If the ledge is more than 35 feet high, you should seek the advice of your local scaffold or boom lift company. They will come out to the property and assess the best method to do the job.

It's important to understand that installation takes patience, and on big projects you have to expect problems. Bid the job so that your profit margin is greater than that of your pest control work, because this is a specialization, and most likely there is less competition in this sector of the market.

BIRD NETTING EXAMPLE 1. I have done a variety of jobs with InterNet products. The first was a YMCA playground area that had two live oak trees that were great homes for a couple hundred sparrows. The building has a functioning 10-year-old electric fence system for pigeons. This job was quite a learning experience in netting installation.

Problems Before the Installation: The technician who bid on this netting job made some errors that had to be solved in the process of starting the job.

• After a phone conversation with a representative of InterNet, I decided that the sun inhibitor product Cintoflex Type E should be used versus industrial netting, because of the Texas sun and the trees involved. (Of course, this cost more.)

• The technician did not measure properly, and we ended up with too much netting.

• A support post that the technician thought we could purchase easily from a lumberyard could not be placed into the courtyard without a crane, so we used a more expensive beam but a less expensive method of installation. The beam had to be specially designed to hold a cable across the walled courtyard so the netting could be laid across it and over the trees. The beam was designed to be attached on top of the building supported by anchored bolts and anchored cables. The total support cost was more than what we had projected in the bid.

BIRD NETTING EXAMPLE 2. Another netting job we have done was at the air cargo building at Love Field Airport in Dallas (see photo on page 34). This was a unique job, in that we combined the netting product and our electric fence product in the same area. If you are familiar with prefabricated metal buildings, and can see the shadowed vertical lines in the photo, you will probably think to yourself that if a netting job is done in this area, these voids will have to be closed off, or grackles, starlings or sparrows will get into this area.

We set up our cable system around the entire building, and then on a few Saturdays, we installed the netting. We used a 14-gauge galvanized wire (less expensive than cable) along the front to give the netting better support at the end of the one-foot I-beams. We were fortunate that the rolls were the right width across, and we ordered the product at a predetermined length.

There are drawbacks with netting. I have recently pulled down netting that was installed improperly by another individual. Gaps had allowed pigeons to get above the netting, where they made a bigger mess than usual. Droppings and feathers ended up on top of the netting, as well as dead birds. The health department wanted something done quickly. We replaced it with our electric fence, and the area looks great. The property manager can now live with the architect's wood-beamed stairwell ceiling.

TACTILE SUBSTANCES. I have used tactile substances such as Roost No More on small jobs around homes where the nuisance was not that great and a temporary behavior modification all that was necessary. The product worked well enough at one home that the customer did not have birds reappear for three years. At that point, we had to reapply the product.

HALLUCINOGENIC BAITS. For products such as Avitrol, the PCO should take extreme care to follow the label. Some states (Illinois, for example) now require some form of environmental impact statement when these types of products are used.

When we were doing an airport job, we witnessed a technician from another pest control company throwing bird bait around the outside and inside of one of the warehouses as if it was chicken feed. This was a clear misuse of the label.

The correct steps are to pre-bait to see whether you can get the pest species to feed at that location, and to determine whether nontarget birds are feeding at that location. Once you know it is only targeted birds, you mix Avitrol at the labeled rate to get the birds to move out of the area.

Bird control in the U.S. is hard work and labor-intensive, no matter what method you use. Shortcuts such as killing birds are not going to be accepted by the public anymore, and if you include bird control in your regular pest control contracts and cannot commit to doing it right, then you should remove it from the contract.

TREE-BIRD PROBLEMS. My company has received calls a few times to solve problems with grackles up in trees. Generally, if the area cannot be enclosed, I would rather not risk my reputation as a bird problem-solver.

However, we have used our electric fence technique on trees in such situations, and each time it has worked. Control has continued in following years when the birds come back to the location.

THE BIRDS, UNPLUGGED. PCOs who have little or no experience with this specialized branch of pest management can start bird control tomorrow with some tin cutters, ¼ inch and/or ½ inch galvanized hardware cloth, metal flashing, a portable drill, #10 hex-head metal screws, a hex-head adapter for the drill, and washers for the screws.

A majority of bird problems can be done with these products from the hardware store. In one job we did, a strip shopping center had 20 recessed areas where four floodlights were hanging. The mesh that was originally installed vertically along the back side of the recessed area kept the birds out of the building but not off the ledges and the tops of the lights.

We used ¼ inch mesh to enclose this area, and it worked great. We cut a section that was long enough to fit the entire area. It was secured by stuffing it up in the area after we cut four holes to fit snugly around the four lights that dropped down. We did use an electric fence on top of this building and on the signs for the pigeon problem, but the electric fence was impractical for the other areas described.

NEST CLEANUP. Another interesting job we did in 1994 was a starling and sparrow problem at an apartment complex. It was very difficult to bid on because it was unclear what to expect in the process of cleaning out the nests. The problem was that the birds were nesting in the dryer vent airflow lines. In some cases, we found starling nests that ran for 15 linear feet.

We developed a simple technique to clean out the nests on this job. We used an industrial vacuum and a flexible copper pipe to slowly pull out the nesting material. Then, we closed the openings with½ inch hardware cloth.

We charged $30 to $40 per vent, but in hindsight we should have charged more. The work was very labor-intensive. It did, however, solve the problem.

Hardware cloth and flashing were the main tools used to solve a problem at an oriental food warehouse in Dallas. The health department warned that they would close the warehouse down if the sparrow problem inside was not solved. I worked out a contract to solve the bird problem and take over the pest control contract from the previous company, which was unable to solve the problem.

We succeeded by closing off vents with hardware cloth on top of the roof and placing flashing around some of the damaged dock doors that were not in use. Once all the holes were fixed, the birds no longer came into the warehouse. I also had the supervisor install plastic curtains on a few of the doors that were open all day. The secret to finding the problem was the top of the dock doors. If there was a one-inch gap, the sparrows were able to fly into the warehouse.

SAFETY EQUIPMENT. We take bird cleanup seriously enough to wear protective gear. One government contract we were going to bid on required that a manager have hazardous material cleanup training. I sent my father to take one of the courses given at various colleges throughout the nation.

The proper equipment includes coveralls, dust and vapor masks, goggles, gloves (it's a good idea to tape the gloves and boots to your coveralls, and to spray yourself with an insect repellent to prevent ectoparasites from the nests crawling on your body), and a good heavy-duty vacuum. A few years ago it cost around $500 for the vacuum, and we use the same one after a thorough cleaning to vacuum up the dust as we are drilling holes on termite treatments.

We did another job at Love Field in Dallas to solve a pigeon problem under a passenger walkway. After repelling the pigeons with an electric fence, it took three people seven hours one night to clean up the remaining mess. We rolled up the existing insulation and disposed of it in plastic bags. We then vacuumed up the pigeon droppings. The vacuum was outside, and the hose was brought into the crawl space. If we did not do this, we would have had to modify the vacuum to prevent dust particles from entering the indoor atmosphere. For safety and aesthetic concerns, the job had to be done when the number of passengers we might contact was at a minimum.

I realize there are many other bird control products on the market. The most recent is the Bird Barrier coil-type product and the pin-and-wire systems. They both make it uncomfortable for pigeons to land on ledges. A Terminix branch in Dallas has successfully used the Bird Barrier to get pigeons out of chimneys in an apartment complex, and many government contracts are asking for pin-and-wire systems. I did a patent search this summer on pigeon control, and even found another form of electric fence for pigeons.

The survival of any commercial bird product will be based on the ability of the PCO to sell the product to the property manager. The installation may be tough, but the hardest part of the job is convincing the property manager to spend somewhere between $10,000 and $20,000 on bird control. The reason, many times, is that their bonuses depend on how efficiently they run their properties. Therefore, many have their own people attempt to do the installations.

Anyone can do bird control. As I have mentioned before, it is hard work, and is not as profitable as you might think, especially if you make that one mistake. To me, the intensity of the project is like a termite job. However, unlike termite work, the results of control are usually immediate, and the satisfaction of solving someone's problem is felt soon after the job is completed.

THE 'NET' EFFECT: PLASTIC VS. TWINE

Several brands of bird netting are now available to PCOs. Gene rally speaking, they can be divided into two categories: plastic molded netting (e.g. BirdNet, from InterNet) and knotted twine netting (e.g. StealthNet, from Bird Barrier).

Bird netting feet) and its mesh size (the size of each hole in inches; the holes are usually square-shaped). InterNet's plastic molded netting is the netting of choice for many PCOs doing bird control jobs. One of the main reasons: it is generally much less expensive than knotted twine netting.

On the other hand, in instances where durability and strength are of primary importance to a customer, and price is a much less significant factor, the knotted twine variety of netting should certainly be considered as an option.

Bird Barrier stocks 2-inch netting for pigeons, 1-inch netting for starlings, and ¾-inch netting for sparrows and swallows. (Custom mesh sizes are available for gulls and other large birds.) StealthNet is available in various dimensions, from 25 feet × 25 feet up to 50 feet × 100 feet.

StealthNet's twine is made from six strands of polyethylene (each strand of twine has a breaking strength in excess of 40 pounds) wrapped into three strands, and then wrapped again. This lends each strand a rope-like strength, according to the manufacturer. The netting is pre-stretched, UV protected, and able to withstand heat of up to 600°F.

StealthNet carries a five-year guarantee. The manufacturer asserts it will last more than 10 years if installed properly, using the professional array of installation hardware available. It is sold through most pest control distributors, with pricing starting at about 16¢ per square foot.

David W. Fincannon is president of A-All Pest Termite Exterminators, Dallas, Texas. He has trained several companies throughout the U.S. in the installation of electric fences for bird control.