Is Bird Netting Suitable For Pigeons In Residential Areas?

Unless you have a very big house, we don't personally recommend that you look at bird netting as a method of dispelling pigeons. There are a number of reasons behind this, and we're going to look at a few of the more important ones today …

Bird net installation is laborious and tricky.

Bird nets are usually installed at a great height, certainly higher than most people could reach, so you will need equipment to help you reach that height to install the nets in the first place. You must also bear in mind that you will need to be able to return to that height should any birds or other animals get caught up in the net (squirrels, bats, etc.), and also to repair any damage. This tends to be more common with nylon-based netting over galvanised steel mesh netting.

Not only will you need a ladder, cherry picker, or similar, but you will also need a team of people … Well, at least one more person. If you're working at height, a safety person is obviously important. If you were to fall from the roof, for example, or the ladder falls down and leaves you with no way of getting down yourself, who are you going to turn to for help? Who will call 911? Home accidents happen much more regularly than you'd think and a great number of them are caused in the quest for a critter-free home.

Other items/methods are often better-suited.

If you only need to protect a few patches of your home, such as windowsills, ledges, or specific areas of the roof, there's no point in going overboard with roll after roll of bird netting. You would have better luck using something that is more designed for the protection of specific areas, such as bird spike strips. These can be created or cut to size and are actually very effective. (And, no, they don't ‘spike' the birds. The birds simply avoid that area.)

Buying roll after roll of bird netting is not going to be cost-effective when a $20 pack of spike strips for pigeons will do the trick.

Bird nets only sort out one bird at a time.

If you have a home that is regularly invaded by a number of different bird species — and sizes — a bird net prevention method won't work. Larger gauge netting for pigeons has spaces between the net that still allows for smaller birds to pass through, and if you were to rely on a smaller-gauge to keep out the smaller birds, larger pigeons could easily find themselves tangled up in it.

Netting must be installed to a professional standard.

If the netting isn't installed correctly, it won't do the job. In fact, it'll do the exact opposite of the job it's meant to do. It'll let pigeons in, break, or fall down. We have actually seen cases of bird netting that have simply fallen down because they weren't fixed in place properly.

Bird netting is a potentially dangerous operation if you don't quite know what you are doing, and you're not expected to know. That's why the do-it-yourself versions come with specific instructions. You will need to follow these instructions EXACTLY as they are written if you want the netting work as directed.