Bird control in Missoula, MT

Which birds am I likely to have on a downtown building?

Most often pigeons and starlings, and house sparrows in vents and sign cavities. That matters more than it sounds: all three are non-native and none is protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, so their nests can be removed at any time and the work does not have to wait for a seasonal window.

It is not a safe assumption though. Swallows will use a commercial building as readily as an outbuilding, and a swallow nest is protected while it is active. We identify what is there before scheduling anything — which birds you can legally remove covers why that step comes first.

The droppings are over our entrance. Is that actually a problem?

Both a safety one and a fabric one. Droppings on a hard entrance surface are slippery when wet, and that is a liability question in the spot every customer crosses. They are also acidic enough to etch paint, corrode metal fittings, and stain masonry and signage, so the damage lands on the most visible part of the building.

Most of the calls we get on this start with a complaint rather than with the damage, which is usually already several seasons old by then.

Why has cleaning it not fixed anything?

Because it removes the symptom and leaves the roost. Birds return to a site they have used, and a cleaned ledge is a cleaner version of the same ledge. A cleaning rota typically passes the cost of exclusion within a season or two and then keeps running.

Cleaning still belongs in the job — at the end of it, once the surface has stopped being usable. That is the order we work in. See bird dropping and nest cleanup.

What does exclusion look like on a shopfront?

Making the surfaces unusable rather than making the birds unwelcome. Netting across recessed areas and open faces, angled covers on ledges and sign tops so there is nowhere level to stand, and mesh closing the vents and cavities that sparrows and starlings nest inside.

On a customer-facing frontage the fixings, mesh colour, and sightlines are part of the specification rather than an afterthought — a fix that looks worse than the droppings did has not fixed anything. Bird netting and exclusion goes through how a survey is scoped.

We are a residential property, not a business. Is it the same job?

The principles are, the geometry is not. On Missoula's older houses the recurring problems are starlings and sparrows getting into soffits, gable vents, and dryer or bathroom vents, and swallows building under an eave or a porch overhang. The vent work is the part worth prioritising, because a bird inside a roof void is doing damage nobody sees until a ceiling stains.

Swallows on a house eave are protected while nesting, so that half is a calendar problem — see swallows on a Montana building.

Can the work happen without closing the entrance?

Usually, yes. Most of it is short-duration work at height over a limited area, so it is a sequencing question rather than a shutdown. Early mornings, evenings, and quieter weekdays all work, and a single doorway can normally be handled while the rest of the frontage stays open.

Tell us the hours you cannot lose and we will build the schedule around them. A couple of photographs from ground level is usually enough for us to say what is involved — send them through and estimates come back within 48 hours.

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