Have birds nesting on my porch. What is the humane way to get them to not nest?

Thank you,
Gerry B.

Gerry,

Thank you for your question to Travis Audubon about the birds that are nesting on your porch. I appreciate you wanting to keep them away from the porch – they can be messy! And I really appreciate you wanting to keep them away humanely. The breeding season is nearly over, so you don’t have long before you can enact this plan.

Once the baby birds have left the nest, remove the nest and all remnants of it. In fact, if you can remove the thing they were nesting in/on that would be good too! Unfortunately, a front porch nest usually means a light fixture or high shelf. In that case, just removing the nests material will be fine. Then keep a close eye on it for the next couple of weeks. At the first sign of nest material showing up, remove it. You could even tie string/yarn/streamers to the area where they were nesting in order to scare the birds away.

Keeping them out for the rest of this year will be easy. It’s next breeding season when you’ll have to be on your toes. Birds usually seek out the same location year after year for nesting. So next spring keep an eye on this location again for signs of nest building and keep removing the nest material if it shows up. Put something else in the way of the nest, etc. until you no longer see signs of nesting on your porch.

I hope this helps! Good luck with your project.

-Laurie Foss