The Birds are taking over!

Ok, how do I get birds to not build a nest under my window air-conditioner? I’m afraid that this is going to be like when we lived in an apartment and the birds are going to take over!

After a mostly too cool month of May we’re suddenly in the midst of a hot humid heat wave here in Toronto, and we don’t have central air. We have two window air conditioners that we put in each year and for the most part they do a pretty good job.

But, last year, the day we put the upstairs air-conditioner in the window some birds started making a nest between the bottom of the AC and the outside window sill where there is a good sized space. I think the birds were little house wrens or something similar. I didn’t mind having them there, but they did get noisy, especially early in the morning. Chirp Chirp and small little bird squabbles at 5:00 a.m. are not how I like to wake up.

Yesterday when Chris installed the upstairs air-conditioner he put a row of bricks underneath it to try to prevent the birds from noticing the gap and building a nest. It didn’t work!

I’m afraid the birds were waiting for their favorite spot. As soon as the AC was in and running we started hearing a lot of chirping outside that window and we could see the birds flying back and forth through the drive way with pieces of grass and other wonderful nest building materials in their beaks.

When we lived in our apartment we used to be bothered by pigeons. For the first few years they just visited, but after one particularly warm winter we could see the pigeons visiting our balcony regularly one February so we decided to check out our winter abandoned balcony and low and behold the darn birds had build a nest in a protected corner and already had eggs! We removed the nest and eggs but that didn’t stop them, they did it again and again.

The next year the pigeons succeeded and actually had their eggs hatch before we noticed. Being animal lovers we couldn’t hurt the babies so we let them raise their two young ones. I was actually curious to see a baby pigeon. I’d never seen one before. I can tell you that they are pretty big right from the start and quickly grow to look like smaller versions of their parents which is probably why I hadn’t noticed baby pigeons before since they are almost the size of their parents and look quite a bit like adults within a month.

Over our years in the apartment we tried everything to get rid of the pigeons and keep them off our balcony. We put out the fake owl. Didn’t work. We strung fishing line strategically across the balcony rail so it would catch their feet and disturb them when they would land. Didn’t work. We strung fishing line from our upstairs neighbors balcony and attached each line to our balcony railing. We put the lines about two inches apart. Yeah, that’ll work, they won’t be able to get through, it will hit their wings and scare them. Nope, didn’t work.

We ended up abandoning our balcony in the last two years or so that we were there. It ended up being a pigeon poop covered mess despite our efforts to get the birds to stop landing on and using the balcony. I hate pigeons!

Now, I’ve got birds building a nest under the air-conditioner. Oh, yes their cute harmless birds, but considering what happened to us last time birds started liking our property, I’m afraid. Very afraid. The birds are going to take over. I just know it! LOL Help!