TL;DR: I built a wifi-equipped water gun to shoot the pigeons on my balcony, controlled over the internet by a python script running openCV reading the camera image of my old iPhone.
The only thing that seemed to work for me was putting a thread across the railing where they used to land. I glued some cheap hooks to the wall either side of the railing and ran a thread over and back.
I’m not sure why it worked. They either can see the thread and get put off, or they don’t see it and freak out when they land on it. I’ve tried both black and white thread and both seem effective. It did snap once probably due to a pigeon being caught out but that’s not a problem.
It doesn’t getin my way either as the thread is loose enough for me to rest my arm on the handrail without it breaking.
My balcony has been crap free for about a year now and it cost like £2 to do.
There's a cat in our neighborhood that shits on our back porches multiple times a day (I have no idea how this is possible, maybe it means the cat will die soon!), and I finally got a huge industrial fan and hooked it up to a motion sensor. Mischief managed.
Once in the Netherlands I saw the simplest solution to pigeons: they stretched a fishing line an inch or two over the balcony railing, so when pigeons would try to land they’d land on the fishing line and be off balance, flying away to a more stable place.
Seems it worked because the balcony was spotless. I’ve seen similar on European churches.
Maybe a lasting solution would be a convenient, dedicated resting rod laced with a little ceasium-137. You know, so they would be willingly placing their gonads on a gamma emitter. I'd say you likely sterilize most, with only a small chance of creating a supermutant nemesis. You could also add some phosphor to attract mosquitos at night.. and sterilize them, too.
We have a pigeon on our balcony. We picked him when he was only a week old and now he lives with us. Our balcony is isolated from the street, so every morning we open a window there so Theodor (his name; although we're not sure, maybe he is she), so Theodor can go out and fly. In the evening he returns; sometimes he gets stuck somewhere due to rain (they do not fly in the rain) until dark (they do not fly in the dark either) and returns in the morning. We worry a little when this happens.
He is not strictly a pet, we try not to turn him into one and hope he will find a spouse in the spring. In the meantime we'll build him a small house that may serve as a nest if he is so inclined. We've read a few books about them and joined a chat of people who keep pigeons, en masse or just adopt a pigeon who needs it.
We do not do that often but about once a week we catch him and sprinkle with a dust against parasites. Pigeons are very pleasant to touch. The feathers have a silky feeling and they are warm, warmer than people.
There are a lot of excrements, of course. We covered the balcony with cardboard to protect and wear a dedicated pair of slippers. Yet we see these little piles with satisfaction because they mean that Theodor eats well and is healthy. By the way it must be a good fertilizer; old books say it was a source of income for the pigeon keeper.
So maybe you can make friends with pigeons instead of shooting them. The balcony is too small anyway (see "The pattern language"). Give them a bath (they love to bath), make them a feeder. (You can strategically position it so that excrements will mostly fall outside.) They are very lovely creatures.
Correct! Keep it up and soon you will have baby pigeons, several times a year until you run out of names and emotional capacity to worry about them all. The babies are kind of terrifying-looking but they fledge in a month or so. Sometimes pigeons take baths together with their pigeon spouses and they wash each other by splashing, which is cute. A small pigeon nestling in your cupped hands in winter is marvellously warm. They are domesticated animals, of course, but when we all stopped putting their numerous babies into pies we stopped being friendly to them too, and now they're all feral. Is that a better deal for the pigeons? I doubt they worry about it either way.
I started a project this year similar to this with rats. It’s now two axis with tracking and a stereo camera with depth detection. The amount of hours I’ve spent on it is astounding but I’ve learned a lot!
Also, ended up swapping the Pi I started with to a jetson.
Cats also don't work. The pigeons eventually kill them by pretending not to notice then flying away at the last moment while the cat is in mid air. The cat then plunges n stories down again and again.
I don't think the pigeons will attack your network any time soon in the foreseeable future.
I'm very disappointed there is no video of this weapon in action.
A fun expansion would be to play a soft sound before shooting for familiar customers.
Solution:
Cut food supply through humans trash. Don’t allow people to drop food on the ground in city center or elsewhere. And make life for some natural predators comfortable, like crows.
When I first saw how two crows shared a pigeon I was impressed.
From the article: "One study found that, between 1941 and 2004, there were just 207 reports of pathogens transmitted from pigeons to humans – anywhere in the world. In all, there were 13 recorded deaths. The true number may be higher, but it would have to be off by several orders of magnitude to compete with the scale of infections from other domesticated animals – particularly some of those with more favourable reputations."
I occasionally (2x per week per location) feed a group of pigeons both in my apartment building's garage as well as my grocery store's open parking lot. They love sunflower seed kernels (unsalted since salt can be really bad for them) which has led to me hoarding sunflower seeds every time I go food shopping. They now recognize my car and swoop in as soon as I drive up to a parking spot (which is not consistent at the grocery store). Hopefully, one day I'll convince myself to stop/slow working and dedicate my free time to studying animal communication and behavior with some ML involved.
Yep. To contract anything, you have to eat or lick the pigeon, eat or lick its droppings, and the pigeon needs to have salmonella etc, right at that moment.
using opencv for image diffs is common quick hack, but shadows will ruin this (bright sun all of a sudden), not to mention nonpigeons haha! hate to say it but yolo/ssd work good for this:
As of 2025 the pigeons are back and version 2 with aiming and a microphone array for target acquisition is still work-in-progress. I’m heading to bed now, but I’ll happily answer any questions tomorrow.
The introduction of GPT 4o probably gives you a much simpler path to identifying the location of pigeons right? Is that something you have looked into?
I am using a raspberry pi and a two axis turret with a pump and reservoir from a car windshield sprayer. right now it's just using differences in pixels to detect movement, by it it's keeping the balcony pigeon free! (a few false positives when a bumble bee flies too close to the camera though) I also have a yolo model version but haven't implemented it yet !
It’s funny when engineers accidentally create/recreate weapons of war to scratch an itch. Like when Mark Rober et al tried to do an egg drop from space only to realize they were essentially creating precision-guided missiles.
30 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 57.6 ms ] threadI’m not sure why it worked. They either can see the thread and get put off, or they don’t see it and freak out when they land on it. I’ve tried both black and white thread and both seem effective. It did snap once probably due to a pigeon being caught out but that’s not a problem.
It doesn’t getin my way either as the thread is loose enough for me to rest my arm on the handrail without it breaking.
My balcony has been crap free for about a year now and it cost like £2 to do.
May 2022, 103 comments - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31377985
Seems it worked because the balcony was spotless. I’ve seen similar on European churches.
He is not strictly a pet, we try not to turn him into one and hope he will find a spouse in the spring. In the meantime we'll build him a small house that may serve as a nest if he is so inclined. We've read a few books about them and joined a chat of people who keep pigeons, en masse or just adopt a pigeon who needs it.
We do not do that often but about once a week we catch him and sprinkle with a dust against parasites. Pigeons are very pleasant to touch. The feathers have a silky feeling and they are warm, warmer than people.
There are a lot of excrements, of course. We covered the balcony with cardboard to protect and wear a dedicated pair of slippers. Yet we see these little piles with satisfaction because they mean that Theodor eats well and is healthy. By the way it must be a good fertilizer; old books say it was a source of income for the pigeon keeper.
So maybe you can make friends with pigeons instead of shooting them. The balcony is too small anyway (see "The pattern language"). Give them a bath (they love to bath), make them a feeder. (You can strategically position it so that excrements will mostly fall outside.) They are very lovely creatures.
Also, ended up swapping the Pi I started with to a jetson.
I don't think the pigeons will attack your network any time soon in the foreseeable future.
I'm very disappointed there is no video of this weapon in action.
A fun expansion would be to play a soft sound before shooting for familiar customers.
When I first saw how two crows shared a pigeon I was impressed.
From the article: "One study found that, between 1941 and 2004, there were just 207 reports of pathogens transmitted from pigeons to humans – anywhere in the world. In all, there were 13 recorded deaths. The true number may be higher, but it would have to be off by several orders of magnitude to compete with the scale of infections from other domesticated animals – particularly some of those with more favourable reputations."
I occasionally (2x per week per location) feed a group of pigeons both in my apartment building's garage as well as my grocery store's open parking lot. They love sunflower seed kernels (unsalted since salt can be really bad for them) which has led to me hoarding sunflower seeds every time I go food shopping. They now recognize my car and swoop in as soon as I drive up to a parking spot (which is not consistent at the grocery store). Hopefully, one day I'll convince myself to stop/slow working and dedicate my free time to studying animal communication and behavior with some ML involved.
Yep. To contract anything, you have to eat or lick the pigeon, eat or lick its droppings, and the pigeon needs to have salmonella etc, right at that moment.
https://github.com/jpvoelz/pigeon-detector
As of 2025 the pigeons are back and version 2 with aiming and a microphone array for target acquisition is still work-in-progress. I’m heading to bed now, but I’ll happily answer any questions tomorrow.
https://youtu.be/BYVZh5kqaFg?si=Ml6e24BO9iiUL6d6&t=650
https://youtu.be/TO8XKIp-f5s