Spring is here and that means it is birds nesting season! Now that you’ve sprung forward, adjusted to waking up in the dark, and cleaned the pantry, are you ready for nesting season? April is the month (depending on your location) where birds establish their nesting site for the year. It’s helpful to know how they work so you can avoid sharing your building with nuisance birds.
1. Finding a place to nest
Birds generally look for four things in a home: food, water, shelter, and warmth. Your building readily provides the last three items (most buildings have standing pools of water nearby). If you carry inventories of food or seed, your facility is the jackpot.
Another thing birds sometimes seek is familiarity, which translates into security. Some birds fly miles due to their migratory nature, but quite a few species are homebodies. Many house sparrows won’t travel more than a mile or two in its entire life.
That means if you’ve dealt with birds in the past, you will probably continue to contend with them. More specifically, if a bird was born at or around your facility it may be their nesting site for their entire life.
2. Building the nest
Birds prefer natural materials, such as twigs and leaves, but they have no problems using items found in your building—we often find packaging, insulation, and trash in nests we remove. This creates a dual problem.
First, the birds are destroying your building and inventory and raiding your trash.
Second, much of these man-made materials are harmful to birds. We’ve had to remove dead birds that became entangled in string. We recommend keeping the area clear of trash, specifically plastics and other harmful wastes.
3. Laying eggs
Nests are not just home base. They are a cradle for the birds’ young. If you have not removed the nest before eggs appear, you may have to wait, depending on the species (see below). Even if you do, the birds may have fixated on the nest location and are prone to return.
4. Incubating
Once the clutch is laid, the birds will sit on their eggs. This is typically not a long period—sparrows will gestate for 11-14 days.
5. Hatching and Fledging
(The data below is based on the English House Sparrow, the most common nuisance bird. Other birds will have their own unique hatching and fledging periods.)
Once the eggs hatch, the hatchlings will remain in the nest for 14-16 days. The parent birds will be very busy finding and bringing food to them, expect more flights from the parents during this time. The fledgling stage follows when the young birds’ feathers fill in and are preparing them to fly. You may see increased bird activity during this time.
6. Leaving the nest
Starting around June, the fledglings become juveniles. At this point, they strike out on their own, forced to establish their own territory juveniles may explore the inside of your facility. If your facility is still bird-friendly, they might decide to build their nests not far from where they hatched.
Meridian knows birds, and we have helped numerous businesses rid their buildings of birds. As we mentioned before, the critical time to remove birds is before they finish their nests. The earlier you can flush out birds, the better. Once they get comfortable, nest removal becomes more difficult. Birds nesting season doesn’t have to be a problem if you take steps to avoid the nests being built on your property.
Also, a note of caution: we cannot move federally protected birds once they lay eggs. In fact, we can’t touch them or their nests until the fledglings have left. Birds protected by federal law range from hawks and owls to chickadees and housemartins.
Nuisance species, on the other hand, we can safely remove at any time. And they are a nuisance. Studies have shown sparrows can leave behind up to 200 droppings in a day. That’s 1,400 droppings per week, 5,600 every month, and more than 71,000 droppings in one year from just one sparrow.
We can think of no better reason to stop them from nesting in your building!
Contact us today to request commercial bird removal services.
Learn how Meridian partnered with the maintenance manager at Rappahannock Electric Co to remove the birds and provide guidance moving forward, the company experienced 80% immediate reduction in interior birds.
Learn about the seasonality and month-to-month bird activity in this article: A Bird’s Eye View of the Year