!!!Many Birds such as pigeons and chimney swifts carry disease such as Encephalitis, West Nile Virus and Histoplasmosis. Avoid areas where bird feces has accumulated or breathing dust particles where bird feces is being removed!!!

Our professional technicians can safely, humanely, and effectively exclude birds from roosting in areas where they pose a nuisance or health risk.

Pigeon

Description 13 1/2" (34 cm). The common pigeon of towns and cities. Chunky, with short rounded tail. Typically bluish-gray with 2 narrow black wing bands and broad black terminal tail band; white rump. There are many color variants, ranging from all white through rusty to all black.

Habitat City parks, suburban gardens, and farmlands.

Nesting 2 white eggs in a crude nest lined with sticks and debris, placed on a window ledge, building, bridge, or cliff.

Range Native to Old World. Introduced and established in most of North America from central Canada southward.

Voice Soft guttural cooing.

Discussion Everyone knows Rock Pigeons, or domestic pigeons, as city birds that subsist on handouts or country birds that nest in pigeon cotes on farms. Few have seen them nesting in their ancestral home-cliff ledges or high among rocks. Over the centuries, many strains and color varieties have been developed in captivity through selective breeding. Since pigeons have been accused of carrying human diseases, there have been several attempts to eradicate them from our cities, but they are so prolific that little progress has been made in this endeavor.

Chimney Swift

Description 4 3/4-5 1/2" (12-14 cm). Nearly uniform gray-brown, slightly darker above and on wings; in fresh plumage shows greenish gloss on wings and mantle. Light below, palest on upper breast and throat. Similar to Vaux's Swift but slightly larger, more uniform gray-brown, with darker throat and breast.

Habitat Breeds and roosts in chimneys; feeds entirely on the wing over forests, open country, and towns.

Nesting 4 or 5 white eggs in a nest made of twigs cemented together with saliva and fastened to the inner wall of a chimney or, rarely, in a cave or hollow tree.

Range Breeds from southeastern Saskatchewan, southern Manitoba, central Ontario, southern Quebec, and Nova Scotia south to Gulf Coast states. Winters in tropics.

Voice Loud, chattering twitters.

Discussion Members of this family are among the fastest fliers in the bird world. Swifts spend all of their daylight hours on the wing and come to rest only at evening. They feed exclusively on flying insects. They drink water and bathe by dipping into the water of a pond or river as they fly over it. Since they never perch, they gather twigs in flight, snapping them off with their bills as they pass. Sometimes a twig fails to break and the bird is tossed backward, only to return again. These swifts gather in communal roosts in air shafts or large chimneys, often whirling in a huge circle as they funnel down for the night.