Pigeons are not dangerous in the way people picture. They do not attack, and they are not aggressive in the way a nesting gull can be. The risk they carry is threefold. Their droppings and nesting material can hold organisms that make people ill, usually through dust breathed in when an old roost is disturbed. A build up of droppings makes fire escapes, walkways and flat roofs genuinely slippery, and the uric acid in them eats into masonry, metal and roofing felt. And an established roost brings a second wave of insect pests that live in the nest debris and come indoors looking for a host.
How dangerous any particular roost is depends almost entirely on two things, where it sits and how long it has been there. Half a dozen birds on a ridge tile is a nuisance. Twenty years of accumulated droppings above a fire escape, in a plant room or over the doorway of a food premises is a genuine health and safety problem, and it is the one that gets left longest precisely because it builds up so slowly that nobody notices the day it became serious.
The disease risk is real, but it is about dust rather than birds
The British Pest Control Association reports that pigeons carry more than 110 pathogens, and that research suggests up to 49 per cent of feral pigeons may be infected with Chlamydia psittaci, the organism behind ornithosis in humans. Ornithosis presents as chills, fever, headache and weakness, and in serious cases as pneumonia. Those are the association's published figures rather than ours, and the fuller picture is set out in the BPCA's guidance on pigeons.
The practical point behind those numbers is that transmission is not really about touching a bird, which almost nobody does. It is about breathing in dust from dried droppings and nest material once something disturbs it, which is why the risk spikes at exactly the moment a well meaning caretaker decides to sweep out a loft or jet wash a roof. That is also why a proper clearance is done in respiratory protection with the waste bagged and handled as contaminated, rather than brushed up and binned.
Droppings are a slip hazard and a corrosion problem
The physical risks are more immediate than the biological ones and are the reason most commercial clients call us. Fresh droppings on a steel fire escape, a gantry, a flat roof or a shop canopy are extremely slippery once wet, and those are exactly the surfaces people are moving quickly on. On a commercial site this is a straightforward workplace safety issue rather than a matter of appearance.
The chemistry causes the slower damage. Droppings are acidic, so over the years they pit and stain masonry, break down mortar and paintwork, corrode metalwork and shorten the life of roofing felt. A heavy accumulation also blocks gutters, hoppers and outlets, and blocked drainage on a flat roof is how a pigeon problem quietly becomes a water ingress problem. On listed and period buildings the damage to stonework is the part that costs real money to put right.
The pests that arrive with the roost
This is the risk people never see coming, and it is the reason a pigeon problem often first shows up as something that appears unrelated. An active nest supports bird mites, and when the young fledge or the birds are excluded the mites lose their host and move into the building looking for another one. They bite people, usually around the arms and ankles, and the occupants understandably assume they have fleas or bed bugs. We've found that a run of unexplained bites in an upper floor flat or a top floor office, with nothing found in the bedding, points to a roost above the ceiling far more often than people expect.
Nest debris also feeds carpet beetle and clothes moth larvae, which then spread into textiles in the rooms below, and a dead squab in a void will produce blowflies. None of that resolves until the nest material itself is removed, which is why clearance matters as much as exclusion.
Where the risk concentrates around here
The coastal towns are where this clusters, and for a specific combination of reasons rather than bad luck. Folkestone, Hythe, Dover, Deal and the Dungeness end of the coast have a lot of warm flat commercial roofing, a steady supply of dropped food from takeaways and holidaymakers, and generations of birds that long ago swapped cliffs and ledges for buildings and have no reason to swap back. Pigeons and gulls end up working the same rooflines, so a site with one usually has both.
From working with clients along that stretch, the properties that give us the most trouble are the disused upper floors above shops, where a broken window or missing louvre has let birds into a space nobody enters from one year to the next. By the time anyone looks there can be a decade of material in there, and the clearance is a bigger job than the proofing.
The law comes before the ladder
Feral pigeons are wild birds and are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, and a nest in use is protected while it is in use. Lethal control is lawful only under the terms of a general licence, and only where non lethal methods have genuinely been tried and have not worked. General licence GL41 covers action taken to preserve public health or public safety and lists feral pigeon among the species it applies to, and using it carries conditions that have to be met and recorded.
In practice this means proofing comes first every time, not as a legal formality but because it is also what works. The same principle applies to gulls on the same rooflines, and what the law allows on seagull deterrents follows much the same logic.
What actually works
Effective bird management is exclusion plus removing the reason the birds are there. That means netting to close off a void or a whole elevation, spikes, post and wire or optical gels on ledges and sills, cleaning down and removing the nest material, and dealing with the food source, which on a commercial site is usually bins, a service yard or a neighbouring takeaway rather than deliberate feeding.
In our experience, netting or wiring an entire elevation works better than spiking the one ledge the birds are currently using because a flock pushed off a parapet simply drops onto the next untreated sill a few feet along. Doing it in stages means the client pays for the same roof three times and still has pigeons on it, which is the most common thing we are called in to put right.
Habits matter too, and the everyday measures that keep gulls off a property work on pigeons for the same reasons, since both are opportunists responding to easy food and a safe ledge.
Where falconry earns its place
We run a Harris Hawk falconry deterrence service, which almost no other firm in Kent offers, and it exists for the sites where exclusion alone cannot do the whole job. Netting a small void is straightforward. A large open flat roof, a service yard, a seafront frontage or a town centre square cannot realistically be covered, and that is where regular flights work, because the repeated presence of a predator makes the site read as unsafe and the birds relocate of their own accord. It is entirely non lethal, and it is a programme of visits rather than a single event.
There is some family history behind that side of the business. John's grandfather carried out pigeon control for London councils and was written up in the local London papers at the time, so bird work has been in the family for considerably longer than the firm has existed. You can read more about the family behind the business and how long we have been at it.
When to get someone in
Get advice if droppings are accumulating on a walkway or escape route, if birds are getting into a roof void or a disused floor, if you are responsible for a food premises or a workplace where this becomes a compliance matter, or if occupants are reporting bites with no obvious source. Do not disturb a heavy accumulation of droppings yourself, because that is the point at which a long standing and fairly static problem becomes an immediate one.
We have been carrying out bird and seagull and pigeon control across South East Kent since 2008, with more than twenty years in the trade behind it, covering domestic, commercial and industrial sites with a 24 hour emergency response. If you have birds on a roof and you are not sure how serious it is, get in touch and we will come and assess it.
Cinque Ports Pest Control Ltd is a family run business based in Dymchurch, Romney Marsh. We are BPCA members, Kent County Council Trading Standards approved, TrustMark registered, SafeContractor approved and CRRU supporters.
