[Camaro5]

Originally Posted by ElleTea

I never understood this thinking.

Some are just more destructive or intrusive than others. It's like getting weeds in your flower garden. Why not let the weeds grow? They're hungry and thirsty, too.

[ElleTea]

Originally Posted by Camaro5

Some are just more destructive or intrusive than others. It's like getting weeds in your flower garden. Why not let the weeds grow? They're hungry and thirsty, too.

Weeds don't have the same value as hungry and thirsty animals, of course, since they are not thinking, feeling beings.

[Camaro5]

Okay, maybe weeds is a bad analogy. I suppose if you're a bird lover you look at it differently.

[Raiderman]

Compare them to bugs, and that might make more sense. Scorpions, spiders, cockroaches, etc are also thinking, feeling beings, but many of us don't want to cohabitate with them..

[nitro1320]

Never had pigeons in my neighborhood until the neighbor across the street put up his bird feeders. The house directly behind his has the official roosting roof. 20-30 pigeons up there daily.

[binionrat]

Around mid-February I put up a hummingbird feeder in the patio and it was fine and just hummingbirds came and visited it throughout the day. At the end of February I put up a large lantern type feeder with finch seed in it. I waited patiently for a couple days but saw nothing. Finally, about a week later I saw a few small birds feeding and then taking off. Within a week there were so many different types of birds all fighting, making a mess of droppings all over my patio furniture and structure, and chirping and squacking so loud I couldn't even hear the tv. Next I saw a couple pigeons starting to hang around and that was that. I removed it and put everything away before the neighbors started complaining. There were so many flying around inside the balcony area I couldn't even open my sliding door or they would of flown in....arghhhh.

[SoHoVe]

Originally Posted by ElleTea

I never understood this thinking. ALL of the birds are hungry and thirsty. It seems a bit sad to only want to feed the pretty ones.


Hummingbird feeders are not generally accessible by other birds, though, they just can't usually access the "juice". I do see oriels at my hummingbird feeder though. They love the sweet stuff.

For me it's not a matter of how attractive the birds are + there absolutely ARE beautiful pigeons.

Pigeons are a domesticated INVASIVE species, their year round breeding really puts the squeeze on the desert's already limited resources available to our native species.

It's obviously not the individual birds fault and I do wish they didn't require population control but that's not the reality as they are VERY effective at reproduction and lack natural predators.

[ElleTea]

Originally Posted by SoHoVe

For me it's not a matter of how attractive the birds are + there absolutely ARE beautiful pigeons.

Pigeons are a domesticated INVASIVE species, their year round breeding really puts the squeeze on the desert's already limited resources available to our native species.

It's obviously not the individual birds fault and I do wish they didn't require population control but that's not the reality as they are VERY effective at reproduction and lack natural predators.

Someone was complaining about sparrows. I don't consider them a nuisance