How to Stop Pigeons Landing On My TV Aerial

It takes the slightest knock of a satellite dish or aerial to cause your signal to disappear and your TV to no longer work, and that slightest knock could easily be provided by the little claws of a pigeon. Or even a few pigeons. The TV aerial is just one part of the roof on which these birds will land, perch, and perhaps roost, with the roof itself, chimneys, and sills and ledges also commonly hit spaces.

When it comes to protecting your TV aerial, you have three main options.

1 - Use repellents/deterrents.

2 - Use a mesh wire cage/protective structure.

3 - Use bird spike strips.

We personally recommend option number 3 — using bird spike strips.

Repellents and deterrents have been shown on a number of occasions not to work, but even if you were determined to find that out yourself, there are other things that you'll need to take into consideration. Repellent and deterrents need to be reapplied regularly, especially fluid and granule formulas (the standard commercially sold pigeon/bird repellent), and this is going to be a real pain in the backside after the second or third time you need to climb up onto the roof to reapply it. You'll need to reapply more regularly when there has been a period of heavy rain or wind, and probably every two or four weeks — whatever recommended reapplication time has been advised on the packaging.

Constant reapplication doesn't just mean an increase in work for you, either. It also means an increase in cost. If you buy two bottles of spray to protect your property, and that lasts for two weeks, you'll need to buy four bottles to protect you just for one four-week period. If it rains twice in that month, you'll need to reapply once again — two more bottles each time, four extra bottles. You're now up to EIGHT bottles in that one four-week period. If the bottle is $20 a pop, the first couple won't seem so bad. After EIGHT bottles or $160, you'll have wished you'd taken another approach. You'll definitely wish then when you see the mounting droppings pile you need to clean away.

Moving along to mesh wire cages or protective structures — approach number 2 — there are pros and cons, just like the other approaches. To start with, creating a cage-like structure takes effort, work, and time. If you can barely fit in the time to investigate a pigeon problem, finding the time to actually put that problem right will be even more hard to come by. If that's the case, leave it to the professionals. Although slightly more expensive upfront, it usually works out to be the cheapest way, and is almost always the quickest and most effective.

The cage structure will prevent pigeons from landing on the aerial itself, but it won't stop them from landing on the mesh structure. You will still have a roosting problem, and you'll also still have a pigeon feces problem.

The third and final method — our recommended method — is to use bird strip spikes. These are strips of spikes, just as the name would suggest, that you affix to certain straight areas with the intention of stopping birds from being able to land there. They won't get impaled on the spiked; they'll avoid them.

These strips can be purchased in different materials, with different appearances, and also in different sizes or widths. Smaller birds CAN still land and roost among the spikes that are designed to keep larger pigeons at bay. If you buy a spike strip that isn't big enough or doesn't quite cover the sill, ledge or space you have installed it on, the birds will simply land on the bits that the spikes don't quite cover.

If you are going to use bird spike strips to stop pigeons landing on your TV aerial, make sure that they are firmly affixed in place and can't swing underneath the metal spokes of the aerial, facing the wrong way. The pigeons will still be able to land on the aerial if that happens. Plastic spikes are also a better choice of metal ones, which can interfere slightly with the TV signal.