Message
Ralph,
I did talk to
Jack Wagner yesterday. He certainly is a friendly and knowledgeable
source. (Ken, he also was quite eager to talk about the monkeys. In
fact he had just gotten a call from Japan this week.) He asked me to send
a photo of the building with some dimensions and he would make
recommendations. However, for pigeons it seems the only 100% solution is
the horizontal wiring and netting as you mention. He says, sound does work
on pigeons: "You can light a firecracker in their ass and they'll
come back if they can still sit."
Best,
Leland
Leland,
From my talk with the
famous Jack Wagner prior to the New York Athletic Club, which had some serious
pigeon probs, he recommended netting. The Club chickened out on some of
the netting, so where they didn't net an open loggia about 9 floors up, they
still have pigeons. We also installed horizontal netting in some areas, which
seems to be a nice place for the little boids to sit (and shit), but at least
the bastards don't nest below it, or fall through it dead. The size of
the netting has to be worked out, to be sure it keeps out the size birds you
have, but isn't too dense (I've forgotten why that's a
problem).
Brooklyn Boro Hall had an electric noise device (about the
size of a coffee can) installed in its cupola to keeep the winged rats out,
which seemed to have worked initially; whether it still does, I don't
know. I can't find the spec which had the name of this thing, but it's
now 15 years old anyway. Jack Wagner is the guy to talk to about all
this stuff.
Ralph