Bad Design Leads to Birds

It seems Wildlife Informed Design: Preventing Future Issues is not a presentation/lecture that is mandatory for aspiring home designers, builders and architects.

In fact, there probably is no lecture of that name at the conferences, workshops and universities where our homebuilders go for professional development. But there should be!

Bird Poop Shutters As nuisance animal removal and repair experts, we are very cued in to the relationship between design and nuisance animal issues.

Some design elements, though they admittedly look good, are nuisance animal issues in the waiting. Here is one of them.

Sparrows Behind Shutters

In the following video, Ryan shows how the shutters on a home with a stone-like surface create a perfect habitat for birds.

As you can see, those shutters sticking out from the building provided great little spots for the sparrows to call home.

That’s why shutters, ledges, awnings, signs, etc. Draw the attention of birds and, to some extent, bats.

Design elements like these shutters and this stone look great. But, designing it this way (without thinking of nuisance animals) only leads to probems.

Change the Design to Prevent the Problem

Since we aren’t all that infuential in the home design world, our opinions on animal proof design are unlikely to have much of effect.

But, we can definitely come in after the fact and help mitigate the bird problem.

A lot of bird control is about making the spaces that birds are using less hospitable to the birds.

The application of pointy spikes on ledges, gap reduction, and wiring are just some of the tools used to keep birds away from places they aren’t wanted.