mast year for pigeon poop!?

June 11, 2020 7:37 AM

Pigeons are pooping on my deck (in Brooklyn, NY). A LOT. I've lived here 20+ years and this is an unprecedented amount of pigeon poop compared to past years. Is there an ecological explanation for this?

I live on the 3rd floor of a small apartment building, with a little deck outside my bedroom. There's 3 stories of fire escape above it, and pigeons sit on the fire escape in classic Brooklyn style and leave behind vast quantities of guano. But - it's much, much more than any previous year, both in quantity of droppings and the size of the individual contributions. They're so big that I can sometimes hear them SPLAT through a closed window. I'm certain I would have noticed if it was anything like this in previous years, because I spend a lot of time on the deck in the spring. Now I'm almost scared to go out there!

Last year I asked about the mast year for acorns in the northeast US. I'm pretty sure that pigeons don't eat acorns, but is there something else that's having a particularly abundant year that pigeons like to eat? A vast bloom of diarrhea berries this spring?

Unfortunately I probably can't convince my landlord or upstairs neighbors to put pigeon spikes all over the fire escapes above me- it's probably not even legal. So I'm more interested in explanations for this unprecedented new poop flood than in solutions - unless you got a really good solution!

posted by moonmilk to Science & Nature (12 answers total)

It could be the pandemic - in my area, it's mostly more rural animals showing up in human-dense areas, and conversely our pigeon populations are down. I suspect your pigeons are relocated from elaewhere rather than a populations boom, maybe spreading out to lower competition, maybe attracted by some new or newly available food source. It may be a complex web of effects rather than a straightforward cause, but the animals have noticed our changing behavior for sure
posted by heyforfour at 7:46 AM on June 11, 2020 [5 favorites]

Unfortunately I probably can't convince my landlord or upstairs neighbors to put pigeon spikes all over the fire escapes above me- it's probably not even legal.

You probably need some solution, that stuff's pretty nasty.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-46964702

Or you could just wait it out until the pandemic's over.
posted by sebastienbailard at 7:48 AM on June 11, 2020

It's everywhere. We have robins in our city-centre back yard for the first time in our lifetimes.
posted by DarlingBri at 7:54 AM on June 11, 2020 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: I hadn't even thought about the pandemic effect. That might also explain the squirrels digging more aggressively in my planters, with less human garbage in the park for them to enjoy.

To clarify - I haven't noticed more pigeons than usual, just way more (and larger!) poop. In fact, even now I don't often see any pigeons out there. But the poop is much more obvious, so I might have just failed to notice a dramatic increase in pigeon visits.
posted by moonmilk at 8:24 AM on June 11, 2020

Last year's mast year = this year's massive chipmunk population. I like the idea of living on a ranch, I just never expected it to be a chipmunk ranch.
posted by theora55 at 8:35 AM on June 11, 2020 [7 favorites]

I live in an urban area and have never seen so many dead birds on my walks around downtown. Every day I spot a couple new ones and it used to be... I don't know, a few a year? We've also had birds pecking on our windows and sitting on the sills which had never happened before. I think the animals are just getting closer with fewer people out and about.
posted by jabes at 8:40 AM on June 11, 2020

Do you have a nest?
posted by Grandysaur at 8:59 AM on June 11, 2020

Response by poster: No obvious signs of a nest nearby. Whenever I catch a pigeon coming or going, it's flying in over the rooftops from somewhere else.
posted by moonmilk at 10:17 AM on June 11, 2020

There may only be a few more pigeons than normal; the pandemic hasn't yet (notably) increased their numbers. But they're active in areas they previously weren't, especially in people-inhabited rather than business-heavy areas - there's fewer people and cars keeping them away. They've probably changed where they're eating (and therefore where they're pooping); restaurant dumpsters have less waste right now, while apartment buildings have more.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 10:22 AM on June 11, 2020 [2 favorites]

Every once in a while a flock of pigeons or sometimes doves discover my shaded patio table and visit it for a week or more and then are gone. While there they make quite a mess. Possibly related, hawks sometimes hunt in my area and they might be trying to hide out from them. If you can remove any sheltering shade they might not like it there anymore.
posted by sjswitzer at 10:44 AM on June 11, 2020

I'm not sure if they actually work, but I've seen plastic falcons to spook away pigeons from the terraces of some pizza places here.. Some peeps here also hang CDs on their balconies to do the same thing.
posted by speakeasy at 10:56 AM on June 11, 2020

I think it's more what they're eating than where. I bet it's a pandemic-related change in their intake and, thus, their output. They are no longer eating a diet rich in stale french fries because people are no longer leaving same in their reach. Instead, they are enjoying Nature's Bounty. Consequently the same thing is happening to them that happens to me when I suddenly get all virtuous and start eating mostly leaves and fruits after months of eating mostly frozen pizza, toaster strudel, cookies, peanut butter cups, and 'splodey biscuits. The... uh... the results are noticeably different.
posted by Don Pepino at 1:38 PM on June 12, 2020 [2 favorites]