Annoying Birds

I’m definitely a bird lover, all kinds of birds are attracted to our property. My favorite is when the bald Eagles fly up the river looking for the spawning salmon.
But.....
I’m not terribly crazy about the sparrows in my eaves. My freshly painted eaves. This is the second year, and the battle is just beginning. I’m looking into something called bird gel that you put on the eaves where they are staying. Has anyone used it, if so, was it successful? If not, I suppose netting is the solution, but not the look I’m after. Any hints or advice would be truly appreciated!
PS. Remember, I do love birds, but the mess is too much!

If the sparrows are house sparrows, you might get rid of them simply by not attracting them to your yard. As you probably know as a bird lover, birds are attracted to areas with food, water and shelter. They are using your eaves for the shelter, so food and water must be nearby. I'm guessing that you might have a bird bath and bird feeders. If so, you could try changing what bird seed you use and that might help. My neighbor is about 1/4 mile from me. She feeds the wild bird mixtures available at most stores that have sunflower seeds mixed with millet and other small seed. She has house sparrows. I feed only black oil sunflower seed with some added suet in the winter. I have never had sparrows or any of the other nuisance birds (crows, brown headed cowbirds) that visit my neighbor's feeders. I do get some other types of sparrows - white throated and chipping - at my feeders. I also get all of the other birds I see at her feeders - cardinal, blue jay, chickadee, titmouse, red-headed woodpecker, red-bellied woodpecker, mourning dove, etc. When the orioles are migrating through, we put out grape jelly and get them. With the suet, we get a few others - downy woodpeckers, pine warblers and the eastern bluebirds like suet. I do feed mealworms when the eastern bluebirds are nesting. The woodpeckers, eastern phoebe and most of the other regulars will give the bluebirds competition for the meal worms. The sparrows do not come in for the suet, jelly or meal worms.

Maybe a combination of the gel and a change in feed will encourage the sparrows to move on.

Good luck!

This message was edited Nov 16, 2017 6:32 AM

shopgirl: I too have house sparrows. House Sparrows, as well as other birds, will return to where they were born. So, once you get house sparrows, they will return to raise their babies and so the battle ensues. The original sparrow will have four clutches per mating season and have as many as 4 to 7 babies per nest. That will equal quite a few birds that will return next year.
My husband had hip surgery one spring/summer and we had lots of house sparrows that returned the following year/s. We have been trapping them ever since. We were able to get a better control of them this past year (about 3 years after surgery). So, you have to keep at it to get rid of them. We trap ours with a Van Ert Sparrow Trap placed in an abandoned bluebird nesting box. The bluebirds gave up and left it to the sparrows. :( It's the only way we have found to control them.
You can also change the feed as mentioned above. Although safflower seeds is not as welcome to the backyard birds, sparrows, blackbirds, and squirrels don't like safflower seeds as much as black oil sunflower seeds. Don't feed any millet. They really like that. We were in a hardware store today and they had a seed "mix" which was 90% millet. That is so misleading.

I can't give you any help with removing them, but if I were in your shoes I would just leave them alone.