How I would win London’s war on pigeons

Value for money: a Harris hawk with its handler in London’s Trafalgar Square, where feral pigeons now number only 120
12 April 2012

Barcelona, what took you so long? The city has joined London in declaring war on pigeons and hopes to catch and kill 65,000 of them, a quarter of the total in the Catalonian capital.

Good luck to them. London declared war on pigeons some years ago and look how far we got. We are still overrun by them. They are the scourge of the city, the bearer of disease, and the poo-ers of unbelievably corrosive poo. These flying rats continue to inflict more damage on London than the doodlebugs ever did.

Mayor Ken Livingstone made a start by ending a decades-long tradition in 2001, when he banned the sale of pigeon feed in Trafalgar Square. Next he introduced a pair of Harris hawks to scare them away.

The hawks are very effective (the number of feral pigeons in Trafalgar Square has dropped from 4,000 to 120) but critics say they are too expensive, costing City Hall and Westminster council almost £60,000 a year. But what is not factored into this equation is the reduction made to the cost of cleaning up pigeon droppings from the pavements and surrounding buildings.

In other words, hawks are unbelievably good value for money. Along with the Oyster card and the C-charge, a largely pigeon-free Trafalgar Square may be Ken's most enduring legacy. Unfortunately, we may have won the battle of Trafalgar Square but we most certainly have lost the war. The rest of London is plagued by them. These feral birds not only carry spellers' nightmare diseases (histoplasmosis, cryptococcosis, and psittacosis) but are destroying our habitat.

What alarms me is the increasing number of obese pigeons which clutter our pavements. These days they can't even be bothered to waddle out of your way when you walk towards them and they expect you to make a detour. Never mind one in four Britons being obese. Most of the pigeons I see are obese, an even greater testimony to our fast-food, litter-lout culture.

Feeding pigeons is actually harmful as it can cause overcrowding and the spread of disease. Spread the word to all your pigeon-fancier friends.

I suppose we get the pigeons we deserve. This week we learn we are facing a new urban menace of divebombing seagulls. If only our pigeons were so active.

It is surely time to implement a humane extermination programme. Installing pigeon netting or spikes is not always effective and can be unsightly — so why not ensure that every council has a hawk on its payroll?

A more pragmatic way might be to hand out poisoned bird feed to tourists and actively encourage them to feed the pigeons. This would kill two birds with one stone, so to speak: the tourists would still get their photo opportunities and it would be a very cost-effective way of keeping the pigeon population down. It's either that or an Eat a Pigeon for Britain campaign.

Charles out of his depth in the bath

The Prince of Wales is urging the public to "snub a tub" and take a short refreshing five-minute shower to protect the environment. I am not sure Prince Charles is the ideal role model for bathroom etiquette. After all, he employs a valet to squeeze toothpaste onto his toothbrush (a colossal waste of someone else's time and energy).

Perhaps Prince Charles should have been less prescriptive and encouraged us to "share a tub" rather than snub a tub. There is no better way of declaring your devotion than bathing in someone else's dirty water. And you come out of it with a clean conscience, no matter how soiled. If Prince Charles were prepared to share his valet's bathwater I am sure he would secure the future of the British monarchy.

Now the net follows you everywhere

So we spend half our waking lives online, watching TV or on the phone, according to new statistics from Ofcom. I fear the day will come when we spend all our waking lives logged on. Facebook is unveiling a Places tool which allows users to share their location.

Meanwhile, a friend is developing phone apps which play a song or a poem relating to where you are in the world. So if you walk down Baker Street, for example, you can hear Gerry Rafferty's eponymous song; in Wimpole Street you can listen to a snatch of Tennyson's In Memoriam (the poem's dedicatee AH Hallam lived at number 67). My friend calls it "augmented reality" (contributions are welcome to his website, poetryatlas.com). A boon for the tourist industry, I am sure, but how much reality can we all cope with?

OED has nothing on Big Society

Vuvuzela has blared its way into the Oxford English dictionary. As has staycation (a holiday spent in one's home country) and national treasure (someone or something regarded as emblematic of a nation's cultural heritage, such as Judi Dench or Stephen Fry). Big Society has yet to make it in. Is that because still nobody knows what it means?

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