Bird Removal in Toronto

Pigeons are the one bird problem that doesn't keep to a season. They don't migrate, they breed in any month of the year, and a pair that settles on your home can raise several broods before next winter. They started out as cliff birds, and to a pigeon a house is full of cliffs: a deep window ledge, a flat roof, a covered balcony.

The trouble is what collects below: droppings on the ledge, the steps and the stonework, nesting material in the eavestroughs. A pair that finds an open soffit or a torn gable-vent screen nests inside instead. No part of the city is short of pigeons; our Toronto, Scarborough, North York and Etobicoke pages cover it part by part.

Pigeons that have got inside, into an attic, a soffit or a vent, are removed humanely, with eggs and young checked for first; the nest is cleaned out and the opening screened or sealed. Pigeons on an open roof or ledge are a different kind of job: we look at the spot they've chosen and explain what can be done about it before any work begins.

A balcony is a ledge with a roof over it, and a pair of pigeons will nest behind a planter or in the corner by the wall and keep coming back. The usual job is removing the birds and the nest, with eggs and young checked for first. Screening the whole balcony so nothing can land there is a larger, separate job that we quote on its own. Depending on the building, your property manager or condo board may need to be involved before anything is fixed to the outside; we'll tell you if that applies.

From April into early summer, the bird in the vent is nearly always a European starling or a house sparrow. An uncovered dryer, bathroom or kitchen vent is a ready-made nest hole, and the first sign is chirping behind a bathroom or laundry-room wall, loudest in the morning, then grass showing at the vent hood. The same birds, and pigeons, use the gaps higher up: a loose fascia board, a soffit corner, a gable vent with a torn screen, and the attic beyond it.

A nest in a dryer duct packs grass in with the lint, and the dryer heats it every cycle, so please don't run the dryer until the duct is clear. Starlings usually lay in mid-April; the eggs hatch in about twelve days, the young fly about three weeks later, and there is often a second brood in early summer. A vent that's quiet in July still has the nest in it, and the pair returns next spring unless it's covered. Bird mites live in an old nest too, and once the young have flown they look for another host, sometimes in the room below.

We check for eggs and young first. Once the birds are out, the nest is cleaned out of the duct, soffit or attic and the opening gets a proper cover; late summer and fall are the best months for it. For the noises a vent nest makes inside the house, see something in the walls.

An uncapped chimney draws birds in two ways. Starlings nest on the smoke shelf above the damper, with chirping from the fireplace and twigs dropping into the firebox. A bird that falls down the flue and can't climb back out flutters against the damper; keep the damper closed, the room shut and the fire unlit, and call.

From May to mid-August the bird may be a chimney swift, a small, fast bird that glues a half-cup of twigs to the inside of the flue. Chimney swifts are a threatened species in Ontario and protected all year, so a nest in use is left where it is; we'll tell you what can be done and when, usually a wait of a few weeks. Any chimney, once it's empty, gets a cap or a screen so it doesn't happen again.

Most wild birds, and their nests and eggs while the nest is in use, are protected under Ontario and federal law; some, the chimney swift among them, are protected all year. Pigeons, starlings and house sparrows, the three that nest on and in houses most often, are the usual exceptions. So identifying the bird is the first thing we do: a pigeon, starling or sparrow nest can be dealt with when you call, while a robin on the porch light or a duck on the balcony waits until the young have flown, usually a few weeks, and we'll tell you what to do in the meantime.

Two things we'd ask you not to do. Don't pull a nest out of a vent, chimney or soffit yourself in spring: if it belongs to a protected bird the law doesn't allow it, and if there are young in a vent the parents keep trying to reach them. And don't cover a vent or seal a gap while birds are inside; a bird closed into a duct dies there, and the smell follows.