Proposal to Control Pigeons: Fine the Hands That Feed Them

pigeonsA “pigeon czar” and birth control could be the prescription for wild-pigeon population control. (Photo: Jeff Mermelstein for The New York Times)

Rumors about an avian serial killer on the loose in Brooklyn raise an age-old question: How to get rid of pesky pigeons? Well, one can kill them (not advisable on grounds of ethics or taste), starve them (well, not really starve them, but stop feeding them) or scare them away. At least those are the methods that most have tried in the past.

Today, City Councilman Simcha Felder, Democrat of Brooklyn, today put out a detailed report [pdf] proposing legislation and other recommendations to curb the city’s pigeon population. The report contains some rather, er, new approaches to the bird problem.

New York City is both a good and bad environment for pigeons, as an Agriculture Department handbook [pdf] explains. Urban life reduces the average life span of a pigeon from 15 years to between 2 and 3. (Could it be the stress?) But urban birds also reproduce more prodigiously — four to six times a year, compared with twice a year in the wild — given the abundance of food and shelter and the relative lack of predators. Hence, New York’s pigeon proliferation.

There are many ways to kill pigeons. Shooting them, as the Agriculture Department handbook notes wisely, is probably a bad idea in New York City. Pigeon poisons have often failed in the long run, as the first birds to die were the weak and the old ones, leaving more room for their fertile brethren to reproduce.

Instead, Mr. Felder’s report advocates a birth control strategy — one that Councilman James S. Oddo, Republican of Staten Island, also recently recommended: birth control through a pesticide, OvoControl P, that recently received approval from the Environmental Protection Agency and has been used in several cities to control pigeon population.

But Mr. Felder’s top recommendation is directed not so much at the birds as the humans. He wants to introduce fines, in an effort to turn public opinion against the pigeons and the people who feed them. (One such strategy was attempted in Basel, Switzerland.) One could say that Mr. Felder’s proposal would have New Yorkers rat on their neighbors.

Asked about fines for those who feed pigeons, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg expressed skepticism today, but agreed that feeding pigeons should be discouraged:

I think that while I love animals and I love birds we do have a lot of pigeons and they do tend to foul a lot of our areas and people would be better off not feeding the pigeons. Those that are here will find food and they just won’t grow at such a rapid rate and we’d probably be better off.

Another proposal is to anoint a city “pigeon czar” who would consolidate responsibility of the feral birds. Right now, oversight of the pigeon population in New York City falls in the purview of several different state and city agencies that oversee public health, transportation and the environment. The report states, “The Pigeon Czar would address the big-picture obstacles that face urban pigeon control, while working with other city, state and federal agencies in New York City to ensure that all appropriate and necessary site-specific methods of exclusion are introduced systematically and effectively.”

City Room observes that consolidating responsibilities under a central czar has been a trend in recent yearswith mixed success. A pigeon czar, one hopes, would not just add another level of bureaucracy.

Diane Cardwell contributed reporting.

Comments are no longer being accepted.

I am sure that the Bush administration will demand that the pigeons practice abstinence as their preferred method of birth control.

Anyone feeling compelled to feed pigeons should do so – in their own apartment. They are disease-infested creatures, which already get enough food in NYC foraging through carelessly discarded food. Their population is propped up by people feeding them. What the pigeons don’t eat, the rats do and there are enough of those around in the city. Feeding pigeons should result in the same fine as not picking up after a dog.

I hope OvoControl P wouldn’t adversely affect other types of birds. Redtailed hawks are already in danger from NY putting out poison for their prey in Central Park.

Martin Friedrichs, what diseases do pigeons carry that are transmittable to humans?

Why is killing them “not advisable on grounds of ethics or taste”?

Ethically it can’t be any worse than killing ducks and, as for taste, just list them on the menu as “Free-Range Squab”.

Or Flying Chilean Sea Bass.

Pigeons are rats with wings. The only people I ever see feeding these feral birds are old ladies who look like they have 30 cats in their flea infested one bedroom apartments.

To Joe, diseases spreadable from pigeons to humans include: cryptococcosis, psittacosis, toxoplasmosis. Also, pigeons harbor ticks, fleas, mites and other ectoparasites.

Leave the pigeons alone! There are far more nefarious foes in our city than these innocent creatures.

Although I’m sure it has happened, I personally have never seen someone ticketed for not picking up after their dog. The idea of ticketing for feeding pigeons would be fall to the wayside as well. I believe It would show up on the record as an enforcement and not be effective at all.

I don’t think it’s fair to lump all pigeons together. Where, for example, would the fight against organized crime be if we were to stop feeding stool pigeons?

Fining crazy old people for feeding pigeons is like arresting crazy homeless people for peeing on the sidewalk. Yes, you can pass the law, but the police will refuse to enforce it. Put yourself in a cop’s shoes. You walk up to some crazy old woman throwing bread all over the park and tell her it’s illegal to do that and you will have to fine. The woman starts muttering in some strange language which you don’t understand, then throws a fit and collapses on the ground like an epileptic. So now you have to call an ambulance. Another fit when she shows up in court. No one knows what language she is speaking, incidentally, mainly because she made the language up herself. The judge has to reprimand people for giggling in the courtroom at the spectacle of this old woman throwing tantrums and dropping onto the floor in another fake epilectic seizure. The judge eventually throws the case out of court in order to move on with business. One experience like this and you, the cop, learn not to bother arresting crazy old people for feeding pigeons.

So what’s the solution? There is none. You live in a big city, you’re just going to have to learn to live with pigeons and crazy old women and crazy homeless people, etc, etc.

To #8, Jeff:

While you may not have seen anyone ticketed for not “scooping the poop,” doesn’t mean this law was ineffective.

Sounds like you’re fairly new to NYC and don’t know of how bad it used to be walking city streets and sidewalks before the pooper-scooper law went into effect.

Heck, walking? Fuggedaboudit. The stench alone on a hot summer day was stifling in well-traveled doggy “poop zones.”

That law worked, so will this one.

So, who made humans the arbiter of what is allowed to live on this planet? Aren’t 6.5 billion+ and rapidly growing masses sufficient to eventually make ever creature extinct including humans? So, what are the consequences if birth control were not allowed anywhere and if every woman in the world who ever became pregnant and were forced to have that child? Perhaps, the problem is not the number of pigeons but the number of us. We carry many more deadly diseases and behaviors than any other creature on this planet. Do animals kill humans just for pure pleasure?

The NYTimes Magazine had an article on pigeon control in LA last year that’s worth reading if you’re interested in the subject:


Harvest the pigeons.

Serve squab for dinner in the homeless soup kitchens.

Can I be the first to apply for the job of Pigeon Czar?

In my role as Pigeon Czar I promise to do the same thing every other “Czar” has done for government. Absolutely nothing.

But I expect a very generous pension. And a car with driver.

Fines are a waste of time and birth control won’t work. Instead, corral the birds and ship them to Iraq.

Not all pigeon feeders are old ladies. Many are but many are not. Pigeons have been around long before people started feeding them. They do just fine with all the garbage left around. What part of, you are also feeding the rats don’t people get? I’ve seen rats feed on bird food, which by the way they love. I’ve also spent hundreds of dollars cleaning my car as well. Think about it. You’re throwing (rat) food on the ground. Is this what you want? And why is it that these people who throw birdseed on the ground do it in front of my house? They never do this in front of there own house.

Just a note about pigeons:

I am sympathetic with the rights of animals to live, but not only are the pigeons are a public health nuisance (in a city already polluted enough), they are unhappy city dwellers.

If you love pigeons and other animals, you should see some well-kept pigeons. My cousin keeps pigeons as a hobby – he takes them out and releases them, and they fly home. Most of the time, they’re kept in a clean dovecote, with good food. They live 10 years, and are actually rather pretty birds.

A pigeon is not inherently a “flying rat”, but the conditions of city life makes it seem like one. They also are like rats in that they spread disease.

If we stopped providing the pigeons with so much food, there would be few enough pigeons that they would go back into their normal lifestyle and not suffer the woes of overcrowding. Plus, we won’t have to suffer their overcrowding any more, either.

To Aaron,
Cryptococcosis, toxoplasmosis, etc. are not carried by pigeons – it’s bred in their feces and caused by fungi that surrounds all of us, mainly fungi found in soil. There is NO evidence that pigeons spread disease to humans. Dogs have worms, bats have rabies, cats carry toxoplasmosis (think twice before scooping that poop)!

Pigeons have saved thousands of human lives in times of crisis. They have even been used by our very own Coast Guard as search and rescue crew. To say that “pigeons are rats with wings” only perpetuates a lethal stereotype and adds to our pathetic sense of cultural arrogance.

Perley J. Thibodeau November 12, 2007 · 9:18 pm

This discussion is for the birds!

ClarksonForPresident November 12, 2007 · 9:52 pm

don’t know about pigeons transmitting diseases, but their droppings eat through car paint finish if left unattended for as little as a few days.

perhaps the animal lovers can foot the bill for detailing my ride?

Smoked squab is the finest kind.

Please… enough with love thy neighbor’s birds. Feeding pigeons is a misnomer. It is feeding everything around, including the rats. Pigeons are a nuisance some places, rats are a health hazard everywhere.

Do you fine the “pigeon” feeders? No point. Another law New York City’s finest will honor only in the breech or only on the Upper East and Upper West sides.

If the birth control stuff works, let the city feed the birds. But be sure it is rat birth control as well! Pigeons might be flying rats, but they aren’t the only rats eating pigeon food.

Just for the record, OvoControl P, the new pigeon contraceptive does not have any effect on a hawk, falcon or other raptor that happens to consume a treated bird. See // for a complete explanation and details.

Pigeons are also well-known vectors for psittacosis, a disease caused by Chlamydia psittaci (a microbe related to the one causing the STD). However, this disease is transmitted by inhaling microscopic particles of pigeon droppings in the air, and tends to present as an atypical variety of pneumonia. Ask your doctor, especially one with a background in public health and/or preventive medicine. And while this is the best known pathogen transmitted by pigeons, there are dozens more that I haven’t mentioned. It’s one of the reasons why the prevalence of respiratory problems is so high among patients who live in urban areas.