Bird control in Lolo, MT

Why does my house get swallows when the neighbour's does not?

Three things together: a sheltered vertical surface with an overhang above it, mud within flying distance, and open ground nearby with flying insects over it. A Lolo property near the creek or the river has the second and third by default, so the first one decides it — and deep eaves, porch overhangs, and covered entries supply it.

It is rarely random and it is rarely about the house being poorly kept. It is geometry.

I keep knocking the nests down. Why do they keep coming back?

They will, and it is also not legal while the nest is active. Swallows are native migratory birds, an occupied nest is federally protected, and site fidelity is strong enough that a removed half-built nest is usually rebuilt within days a metre along.

The site has to stop being suitable — that is the only thing that changes the outcome. Swallows on a Montana building goes through what does.

So what actually works on a house eave?

Netting stretched across the open face beneath the eave or the overhang, so the surface cannot be reached, tensioned and closed at every edge. Where the geometry allows it, altering the surface angle also works, because a swallow needs something close to vertical with a ceiling above it.

The edges are the whole job. A gap lets a bird in behind the net, and a trapped bird is a worse outcome than the original nest. See bird netting and exclusion.

What if something is nesting in the soffit rather than under it?

That is a cavity nester — starling or house sparrow rather than a swallow — and it is a different and easier job. Neither species is federally protected, so the nest can be removed at any time, and the fix is mesh or screening closing the opening rather than netting across a face.

Worth doing promptly. Nesting material in a vent is a blockage and a fire concern, and in a roof void the damage stays invisible until it is not.

Is any of this a problem near the creek?

Not for the exclusion work itself — netting and mesh are physical, not chemical, so buffer rules do not come into it the way they do for weed treatment. What the corridor does change is the volume and variety of birds, and therefore the odds that what you have is a protected species.

Which brings it back to identification first. A photograph of the nest is usually enough.

When can it be installed?

Autumn once the young have fledged, or early spring before the birds return, for anything protected. For sparrows and starlings, whenever suits.

If you are reading this mid-summer with birds overhead, book the survey now and the install lands in the next window. That is the normal shape of this job. Get in touch — estimates are free and back within 48 hours.

Could I put the netting up myself?

You can buy the material easily, and that is the trap. The failure mode is not the net, it is the perimeter: an edge that is not closed lets a bird in behind the netting, and a bird trapped behind a net on a two-storey eave is a considerably worse situation than the nest you started with — for the bird, and for you, because it has to come down again.

Tension is the other half. A net that sags collects debris, loses its line, and gives a foothold rather than removing one. Getting both right on a house eave, at height, over a porch or an entry, is genuinely fiddly work.

If you want to do part of it yourself, the vent and soffit screening is the sensible half to take on — it is at a workable height and the species involved are usually the unprotected ones.

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