As soon as I noticed the mud going on the top, I'd scrap it off. I refused to even let it reach nest stage. I sprayed bleach up there, hoping the odor would deter it. No dice. So every day as soon as I got home from work, I'd go outside and scrap off the layer of mud.
And then my dad and I were going up to Minnesota to put his house on the market and I knew if we didn't do something, we'd return home to a full-blown nest. The mud all over the patio floor and ceiling and on the walls of the house were bad enough--I did not want to see what a nest full of little baby birds could do with their poop shoots. (If you watch the web cams of eagles nests, you know what I'm talking about here.)
Researching online didn't offer much in the way of solutions. The only idea someone had that seemed to work was fastening a mirror atop the pillar so the bird thought another bird was there. I didn't have any mirrors lying around the house and I really didn't have time to go shopping for one, so I gave it some thought and came up with my own idea.
You can see the mud that darn bird left all over the side of my house! (boo) But I'm not sure you can see what I did. You know when you order something and the store uses those air-filled pillows to keep things from knocking around? We used two of those and taped them on top the pillar with painters tape.
We caught the bird there a couple of times before we left and I expected to come back to find he had ripped down our makeshift barrier or that a storm had blown it away. That's not what happened. When we returned home, everything was still up there and there were no bird's nests to be found. Hurrah!
