How to Prevent Birds from Nesting in Eaves

LESLIE: Alright. Now we’ve got Clyde in Oregon on the line who’s dealing with sparrows that are taking over. What’s going on at your money pit?

CLYDE: Well, this happens to be my daughter and son-in-law’s cabin. And they came up and there were hundreds of sparrows nesting in the eaves.

TOM: Oh, boy.

CLYDE: And they blew them all out with water and stuff and they came right back.

TOM: Huh. OK.

CLYDE: They have sort of been told, I think, to put up netting but I want to get an owl there and have him eat them up.

TOM: Well, that would be one fat owl, I think, with all those birds around. Well, a couple of things. Whenever you have perfect landing spots, like the eaves that you’re describing, it is rather difficult to stop the sparrows from doing what they like to do, which is nest. There are different types of bird spikes that are available that you basically can staple up and attach them to the spaces that are not very obvious. But it makes it impossible for them to get in and out of there and set these nests up.

I don’t know if you’ve seen these but they look like pieces of wire that are sort of bent up at a 90-degree angle that kind of look very bushy. And when they’re sticking up there – you’ll see them on top of lots of building, especially commercial buildings. The birds can’t land there. And so I think something like that might be a better option than putting up the netting and perhaps a little more attractive.

LESLIE: Yeah. And it’s usually sold by the foot. It’s like either sold in 3-foot pieces – I know I used it for an episode of Hotel Impossible in North Carolina that was just getting all these birds sort of sitting on the eaves in there and they were pooping all over the front doors. It was horrible. But it works.

CLYDE: That’s nice and easy.

TOM: If you go to a website called Bird-X – B-i-r-d-X – you’ll see a wide variety of products there, one of which is just simply called Bird Spikes and it’s just really simple. It’s not very expensive. And you can attach it in those spaces and that ought to keep them from coming back.

CLYDE: That sounds great. I really appreciate it. And I’m probably the one that (audio gap) put it up.

TOM: Alright. Good luck with that project. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.