My apt. complex has assigned parking spots. Convenient. However, my spot among others is located under a row of power/telephone poles. When you pull in your car is under these lines. The pigeons like to congregate on the line nearest the pole under which my car unfortunately sits.
Pigeons are prodigious shitters. Splats the size of dinner plates that harden in the sun. Hard to wash off, damned irritating! Apt manager can’t do anything, says you can’t park in a visitor spot down the line just to avoid pigeon shit. I like it here though, so I have come up with some options:
Shoot em. I have a BB gun which is pretty quiet, but with cameras all over I can’t find a spot of concealment where I could pick em off without being spotted. I could sneak over the fence to the Jehovah Witness hall and shoot em from there, but I bet they have cameras too. I have other weapons but they are quite loud.
Cut down the pole with my chainsaw. This would attract attention also and create collateral damage including possibly disrupting my status as a model tenant.
Covering my car with a tarp of some sort. This would be a pain in the ass and people would think I was an elitist redneck for covering a ford taurus with a tarp.
4.From a secure off-site location deploy a UAV (kite or drone) to deliver some sort of material over the lines (old tennis shoes tied together?) that would dissuade the pigeons from roosting there.
Seriously though, this this is damned annoying and any suggestions, helpful or unhelpful would be appreciated
How close to the edge of your car is it? At my work we had that problem for a while, but it was just about two feet from the front edge of my car so I started leaving my car hanging out of the parking spot a little bit. Then I got comments like “What’s a matter, you afraid of the wall or something?” (That row of spots is against a wall). But, hey, my car was clean at the end of the day.
We ended up finding that if we just kept the dumpster closed, the birds stopped hanging around, now we don’t have any problems at all. Which brings me to my next suggestion. Is there an open dumpster nearby? If there is, close it. If you take away their food source, they’ll leave too.
You could try mounting a fake owl or two nearby, within line of sight. I’ve seen those around the city as deterrents. Another suggestion I’ve heard is if someone can get up there if it’s not too high, run a very thin nylon rope from pole to pole, just above the line they sit on - small enough the birds won’t want to or be able to grip it, close and swingy enough to be in the way of the electric line so they can’t sit on that, either. It would need to have weights attached in a couple places.
Feed them dry rice?
Bird spikes are very effective, but I don’t know if they can be attached to the kind of lines you have.
Unfortunately, some of these would be only temporary measures:
Open one of your apartment windows and retreat inside. Shoot from in there. Aim carefully, though. Don’t hit your window.
Fly a remote-control drone of some sort, to “buzz” the pigeons.
Maybe a bird club could have some advice?
Is there any way to hang some kind of tack cloth on the line? Or some sticky substance?
Spray them with a water gun, or hose? Or maybe a sensitive motion sensor aimed at the line, connected to a high-powered water nozzle that automatically sprays the line.
Park on the street.
Set up a car port, or tent above the parking spot. Or, one of those portable canopies.
I just had a weird idea: can you tie strips of flagging to the power lines?
The kind of colored plastic tape that’s used , for example, to play “flag football”. It’s just a ribbon about 1-2 inches wide. If you climb up on a ladder (maybe illegal,and dangerous too… but what do I know?) and hang the tape in a line of strips about 10 inches long that flap in the wind, maybe the movement would irritate the birds enough to stop perching on that same part of the cable.
(This scene filmed with professional actors…Kids,don’t try this at home without asking permission first)
A number of businesses (as well as the city) here in Indianapolis put up speakers and short, random bursts of very loud sounds that disrupt the birds and make 'em fly off, with some apparent success. Of course, your neighbors may take umbrage.
I would strongly suggest not climbing up on a ladder and attaching stuff to the power lines. They might be covered with some kind of plastic weather-protective material, but they are not insulated to the extent required for safety.
