Birth control for bird control? Toronto put pigeons on the pill to fight the flock

A city pilot that put pigeons on the pill to regulate the population costs about $24,000 a year and is listed as a success in this year’s budget.

Toronto’s pigeon problemA city pilot that put pigeons on the pill to regulate the population costs about $24,000 a year and is listed as a success in this year’s budget.

Luis Canseco gets anxious when he walks across the Yonge Street and Finch Avenue intersection because he knows he’s directly in the line of fire.

Not from cars or trucks — Canseco keeps a wary eye on the wires overhead where dozens of pigeons congregate, feather to feather.

Whether he can make it across unscathed has become a crapshoot. “I’ve been hit with liquid three times in the last year,” said Canseco. “Now I cross it with an umbrella, rain or not.”

Toronto’s prodigious pigeon population has long been a frustration for residents who — even away from their excrement-painted balconies — can seem like collateral damage in a war being waged between those who want to feed the flocks and those who want them gone.

Coun. Lily Cheng (Ward 18 Willowdale), whose ward includes Canseco’s intersection, said many residents have complained about the influx in recent years.

“There’s many condo residents who no longer feel like they can use their balconies, which is what precious outdoor space they have,” said Cheng, noting there’s been more signage in her ward imploring people to stop feeding the birds. “It’s just not hygienic and hard to keep clean.”

In an effort to humanely reduce the numbers of feathered bombers, the city has put some of them on the pill, an endeavour listed as a success in this year’s budget. Under the pilot project that began in May 2022, the city has set up feeders in four locations across the city that dispense feed laced with OvoControl — birth control for birds.

Esther Attard, veterinarian and director of Toronto Animal Services, said her department worked with a pest control company to set up automated rooftop feeders: two downtown, one in East York and one in North York. City staff are looking at adding a fifth downtown.

According to Attard, OvoControl has proven to be a humane, successful baby blocker for birds in various countries, including Spain where a recent study showed a steady decrease in the avian population after several years.

The feeders dispense a fixed amount of food that contains the birth control pellets at the same time every day. The flock size is then tracked by a nearby camera, although it’s nearly impossible to get the same pigeons to take their daily dose.

Attard said the pilot costs about $500 per site for a flock of no more than 150 pigeons, or about $2,000 a month for all four sites.

Attard said there has been “some decrease” in the flock size, but she expects to have a better picture of its progress by the summer.

“The bulk of them are domestic, abandoned pigeons,” she said, noting the 2022 bylaw amendment to restrict the number of pigeons residents can keep. “The difficulty has been getting people to stop feeding and conditioning them.”

Canseco said he’s concerned about the health implications of having so much excrement around the city, but Attard noted that while it could carry silicosis or salmonella, the risk to humans is notably low and rarely poses a public health threat.

Vancouver’s TransLink tried a similar tactic at eight SkyTrain stations in 2019. The city’s automated rapid transit was often disrupted by pigeons that ended up on the tracks, triggering intrusion alarms, hard brakes and unnecessary service delays. A spokesperson for TransLink said the project lasted 18 months and returned in 2022 at seven stations. While the pigeon populations have not increased, Thor Diakow said, they also haven’t declined.

Attard said the method doesn’t harm the birds, even if they embrace their greed for feed and swallow more than one daily dose, but it also doesn’t harm what few seagulls and squirrels have gotten into the laced food.

Nathalie Karvonen, biologist and executive director of animal rescue Toronto Wildlife Centre, neither endorses nor condemns the pilot project.

“People tend to ride into two camps: either they are adamant they must continue to feed animals or they’re very upset because there’s too many pigeons,” Karvonen said, adding that as long as it’s humane and fiscally responsible the pilot is better than the cruel practices of poisoning or trapping and killing them.

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Birth control for bird control? Toronto put pigeons on the pill to fight the flock

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