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Two Councils are considering how to deal with problem birds at the moment.  West Berkshire Council is considering putting pigeons on the pill in a bid to keep their numbers low.  The quantity of pigeons around the town of Chaddleworth has become such a nuisance to local residents that drastic measures are ready to be taken.

In fact, putting the pigeons on the pill is the more humane solution being suggested, others would mean killing them outright.  One of these suggestions would mean bringing in shooting clubs to take care of the bird problem, but this is being treated as a last resort.

Mean Gulls Torment Bath

One of the main problems that the pigeons are causing in the area is making paths slippery with their mess.  There is a railway bridge on Hungeford High Street which pigeons like to roost under, and the path underneath has become particularly slippery when wet.  For this problem, however, the Council are in discussions with Network Rail to arrange bringing in pest controllers to come and deal with the problem.  The pill will of course only stop pigeons in the area from continuing to breed, it will not do anything about the ones which are already there.

The solution of how to get the pigeons to take the pill is a very simple one, they are merely mixed in with some grain and then thrown to them.  Of course this is no guarantee that all the pigeons in the area will end up getting them, and results from the efforts would take some time to see.  It is yet to be seen whether the Council will put the initiative in place.

Meanwhile Bath and Northeast Somerset Council have got an ever increasing problem with the gull population in Bath.  Not only do they have the problem of mess, making the beautiful city a sight less attractive, but the gulls are actually quite aggressive.  Regular complaints are received of gulls ripping open plastic gulls.  They have also been known to take food off peoples plates from outside cafe tables, and there have even been reports of them attacking dogs.

If this is starting to sound like a Hitchcock film, well you probably have an over active imagination.  However these scavenging birds feeding off scraps of food left around really are pests, even if they are often not thought of that way in the traditional sense.  If you think of a whole town or city as being equivalent to a private residence, however, then they would be about the appropriate size for a traditional sort of “pest”.  In fact both the Councils in these cases are said to be bringing in pest controllers to deal with the problem.

In the end, however, on whatever scale, pests are generally caused by the same thing: lack of cleanliness.  When the area is the size of a city, however, then it takes so many people acting responsibly together, including people who are just coming to visit, that it is extremely hard to get the whole place cleaned up.  In the case of both pigeons and gulls though, this is still the only long term solution that there is.

Tags: councils, gulls, pest control, pest control news, pigeons

Written by Paul Simmons

Paul has been working in the pest control field for 6 years and enjoys writing about contemporary events relating to pest problems and solutions in the UK