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Two pigeons huddle in the cold outisde Prince Hall at King's. (Photo: Ezra Black)

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Pigeons at King's.

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A flock of pigeons caused quite the flap at the University of King's College this October.

The birds, which had taken up residence in Alexandra Hall, were defecating on buildings, nesting on ledges and creating a general nuisance.

King's hired Ace Pest Control Ltd. to take care of the problem by laying pigeon traps.

Students who witnessed the process were treated to a strange sight.

Atop the Prince Hall cafeteria was small metal cage; Pigeons wandered in but couldn't wander out.

"It was weird," says King's student Brittney Teasdale. "Why would they do that to pigeons?"

Gerald Wilson, head of maintenance at King's, says more than forty pigeons were trapped.

The not so tender trap

John Zinck, branch manager at Orkin Pest Control, says live trapping is commonly used by commercial pest control contractors.

It's done by setting traps near nesting areas and baiting them with bird seed or corn. Once lured in, the pigeons can't escape.

Technicians come periodically to collect the birds which are then killed by gassing or neck-dislocation; pigeons dead; problem solved.

"That's where the live trapping becomes politically not very nice, I guess is the best way to put it," says Zinck. He says that pigeons have an excellent homing sense and if released, they would fly directly back to the site from which they'd been removed.

Wilson says he doesn't know what happened to the birds that were captured at King's.

"If [the pigeons] were harmed, they were harmed without our knowledge."

Ace Pest Control was contacted but declined to comment saying UNews was tying up their phone lines on a Sunday.

They have yet to return our calls.

Dirty birds

Wilson says the pigeons posed a health risk to students.

According to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH), pigeons can cause disease. The birds allow their feces to accumulate in great amounts. Inhaling too much of the stuff puts people at risk from a number of diseases, including parrot fever.

Healthy adults are unlikely to be infected but children, the elderly and people with weak immune systems are at risk.

However, these are relatively mild, flu like ailments that are mercifully rare. Since 1996, only 50 cases of parrot fever have been reported in the United States annually and about 70 per cent of them got the infection from pet birds.

DOHMH says the chances of actually catching a disease from a pigeon are extremely small.

Pigeons also pose a risk to property. Zinck says their feathers and nesting material clog drains and the acid in their droppings is corrosive enough to strip paint off cars.

Love birds

Hope Swinimer, of the Hope for Wildlife Society, says "[King's] just wasted a whole lot of manpower, a whole lot of effort, to solve absolutely nothing."

Swinimer says trapping is never a long-term solution.

"Pigeons are such that they're just going to reproduce more."

She says pigeons mate for life and one nesting pair can produce a clutch of pigeons in as little as four weeks. If a section of the population is taken out, the rest of the birds produce more hatchlings to fill the void.

A 1992 study by Daniel Haag-Wackernagelv of the Department of Medical Biology at the University of Basel in Switzerland shows that culling actually rejuvenates flock sizes.

Between 1961 and 1985 almost 100,000 pigeons were trapped and killed by the game-inspectors of Basel but this had no effect on the overall pigeon population.

Wackernagelv writes that killing pigeons reduces competition for feeding and breeding. In such an environment the dead are quickly replaced.

Alternatives to trapping

Most pest control companies offer alternatives to live trapping.

Zinck says Orkin Pest Control offers non-lethal methods like netting, pigeon spikes and electronic deterrents. He says these usually prevent the birds from landing and nesting on ledges.

Swinimer says she had her own problem with seagulls at the Hope for Wildlife farm in Seaforth, N.S. Her solution was to run a wire four inches above the peak of the roof. Seagulls could no longer land and the problem was more or less fixed.

She says that the gull problem is not fully eradicated but she's willing to share her space with wildlife. She thinks others should take this lesson to heart.

"There is an intolerance out there that startles me. And it's often dealt with in a quick knee jerk reaction of 'well, let's just destroy it,' but that doesn't solve anything."