Latest / Logosofia no Dia a Dia / Pigeon Eviction 101: Netting, Cameras & Israeli Law
Transcript
- [Prompt] custom: As I shared yesterday, a delightful pigeon has taken up residence on our balcony here in Jerusalem. | Hosts: corn, herman [Response] Corn: Daniel sent us this one — and it's a follow-up to something we've been tracking. A pigeon has claimed his Jerusalem balcony as its own, and now he's trying to figure out how to evict it without breaking Israeli law, harming the bird, or endangering his one-year-old son Ezra. He's asking whether bird-blocking netting is really the best bet, given that spike strips are a toddler hazard and ultrasonic devices are basically useless. And here's where it gets interesting — he's got a Reolink IP camera and wants to know if he can configure it to monitor the nest remotely while the family's away for a few weeks this summer. What's the cleanest path to a satisfactory conclusion for both the birds and the humans in this picture? Herman: The short answer is yes, netting is the gold standard — and the Reolink camera is going to be Daniel's best friend over the next seven weeks. But let's start with what he's actually locked into here, because the legal and biological constraints are what make this a genuinely interesting problem. This isn't just a pigeon on a balcony. This is a pigeon protected by one of the stricter wildlife laws in the region, on a clock that runs about seven weeks, and the window to act without harming the chick or racking up a fine is razor-thin. Corn: That's a long time to share a balcony with a bird that doesn't pay rent. Herman: It is, and Daniel's already flagged that tension — it might feel altruistic to let the pigeon stay, but the pigeon isn't exactly contributing to the lease. The thing is, Israel's Wildlife Protection Law from 1955 makes this non-negotiable. The law prohibits destroying, taking, or disturbing active nests of wild birds. The Israel Nature and Parks Authority enforces this, and fines for disturbing an active nest can reach seventy-five hundred shekels — roughly two thousand dollars. That's not a slap on the wrist. That's a serious financial deterrent. Corn: The state of Israel has effectively made Daniel a reluctant landlord to a rock dove. What's the specific trigger here — what counts as "disturbing"? Herman: The key phrase is "active nest." Once eggs are laid, the nest is active. You cannot move it, remove it, or do anything that would cause the parents to abandon it. The law doesn't distinguish between a bald eagle and a pigeon on your balcony — if it's a native wild bird, it's protected. The rock dove, Columba livia, is native to this region. These are the same birds that were nesting on cliff faces in the Judean hills thousands of years ago. The fact that they've adapted to high-rise balconies doesn't change their legal status. Corn: The balcony is, legally speaking, a cliff face. That's a framing Daniel can take to his landlord. Herman: I mean, biologically, that's exactly what it is. Rock doves are synanthropic — they evolved to nest on cliff ledges, and a high-rise balcony railing or corner is essentially an ideal cliff substitute. It's sheltered from wind, elevated from ground predators, and if there's an overhang, it mimics the rock crevices they'd use in the wild. The pigeon didn't pick Daniel's balcony randomly. It assessed the site and determined it was structurally perfect. Corn: Which is flattering in the worst possible way. Herman: Here's the part that makes this urgent — once a pair successfully fledges young from a site, they imprint on it. They will return. Not maybe, not probably. They will come back and nest again, and again, and again. This is why the "just wait it out" approach without follow-up prevention is a recipe for a permanent pigeon condominium. Daniel's balcony becomes the family homestead for generations of rock doves. Corn: The seven-week clock is both a prison sentence and a deadline. What's the actual timeline inside those seven weeks? Herman: The rock dove nesting cycle is remarkably consistent. The female lays two eggs — almost always two — and incubation runs about eighteen days. Both parents take turns on the nest. When the chicks hatch, they're altricial — naked, blind, completely dependent. The parents feed them something called crop milk for the first four weeks. It's a secretion from the lining of the crop, rich in protein and fat — only pigeons, doves, and flamingos produce it. Around day thirty to thirty-five post-hatch, the chicks fledge. They leave the nest, typically in the early morning, and they don't come back. The parents might hang around for a day or two, but the nesting cycle is done. Total time from egg-laying to fledging: roughly seven weeks. Corn: I'm going to pretend I didn't learn that. Herman: It's actually fascinating biologically, but I take your point. The practical takeaway is this: if Daniel intervenes at any point during that seven-week window, he's risking the chick's life and a seventy-five-hundred-shekel fine. The only legal, ethical move is to wait. Corn: While he's waiting, he's got a one-year-old to think about. Ezra's crawling, probably walking by now — he was born in July last year, so he's right at that age where everything goes in the mouth and every surface is a climbing opportunity. Spike strips are out. Herman: Spike strips are sharp metal or plastic pins — they're designed to make landing painful for birds, but for a toddler, they're a puncture hazard. Bird gel is worse — it's a sticky polybutene compound that's toxic if ingested, and a one-year-old will absolutely put sticky fingers in his mouth. Chemical repellents, same problem. These are all non-starters. Netting is the only physical barrier that's safe for a child, and even then, it has to be installed correctly. Corn: What does "correctly" mean here? Herman: The netting needs to be UV-stabilized polyethylene with a mesh size of nineteen millimeters or smaller. That's small enough to exclude pigeons but large enough to let smaller songbirds pass through — you're not trying to turn the balcony into a bird prison, you're just blocking the pigeon-sized tenants. The critical safety factor for Ezra is tension. The netting has to be pulled taut and anchored securely to the balcony railing and the overhead slab. If it's loose, a toddler can pull it down, get tangled, or use it as a climbing net. Properly tensioned, it's essentially a transparent wall — birds bounce off it, kids can't grab it. Corn: What's this going to cost Daniel? Herman: For a standard Jerusalem balcony, the netting itself runs about two hundred to four hundred shekels. Professional installation — which I'd recommend given the toddler safety concern and the need for proper tensioning — is another five to eight hundred shekels. So all in, somewhere between seven hundred and twelve hundred shekels. That's a one-time investment that solves the problem permanently. Compare that to a seventy-five-hundred-shekel fine for disturbing an active nest, and it's not even a close call. Corn: Daniel mentioned ultrasonic devices being useless. Is that actually true, or is that one of those things people say because they read it on a forum? Herman: No, it's well-supported. Pigeons habituate to ultrasonic frequencies within days. There was a study out of Hebrew University's Department of Ecology last year — 2025 — that compared deterrent methods over a two-year period. Netting reduced pigeon re-nesting by ninety-four percent. That's barely above placebo. The birds hear the sound, realize nothing bad happens, and ignore it. Reflective tape and decoy owls have the same problem — pigeons are smart enough to figure out within a week that the owl hasn't moved and isn't a threat. Corn: The entire pigeon-deterrent industry is basically selling things that work for about five days and then become balcony decorations. Herman: That's not far off. Netting is the only intervention with robust, peer-reviewed evidence behind it. Everything else is either ineffective, unsafe for children, or both. Corn: Alright, so netting is the answer. But Daniel can't install it until the chick fledges. Which brings us to the surveillance question — he's got this Reolink camera and he wants to know if he can use it to monitor the nest while the family's away for a few weeks this summer. Herman: This is where it gets fun. Reolink cameras — models like the RLC-810A or the RLC-520A — have a feature set that's surprisingly well-suited for wildlife monitoring. The key capability is custom motion detection zones. You open the Reolink app, draw a polygon around the nesting area, and the camera only triggers on motion inside that zone. You can set the sensitivity to "pet" or "small object" mode — on Reolink's one-to-one-hundred scale, you want it around sixty to seventy. Too high and you'll get alerts every time the wind blows. Too low and you'll miss the chick's first flight. Corn: Daniel can basically draw a box around the pigeon and tell the camera to ignore everything else. Herman: And when motion is detected, the push notification includes a snapshot. He'll get a photo on his phone within seconds of activity at the nest. For remote monitoring while traveling, he can enable continuous recording to an SD card — a hundred and twenty-eight gigabyte card holds about seven days of 4K footage — or set up an NVR for longer storage. The camera also supports email alerts with a thirty-second video clip attached. So even if he's in a different time zone, he'll wake up to a highlight reel of pigeon activity. Corn: That's a level of surveillance usually reserved for state actors and extremely anxious homeowners. Herman: There's one more feature that's perfect for this: time-lapse mode. The Reolink app lets you capture images at set intervals — say, one frame every five minutes — and compile them into a video. Over seven weeks, that's a complete visual record of the nesting cycle. Eggs appearing, parents rotating incubation duty, chicks hatching and growing, first flight. There's a whole community of Reolink users doing exactly this — the IP Cam Talk forums and the Reolink subreddit have dozens of threads on pigeon nest monitoring. There's a user in Barcelona who documented an entire nesting cycle on his balcony with an RLC-810A, and the footage ended up being used by a local ornithology group to study urban pigeon behavior. Corn: Daniel's pigeon problem doubles as a citizen science project. Herman: It really does. The IR night vision on these cameras is good enough to identify individual birds by plumage patterns, and the 4K resolution means you can see details like whether the chick's pin feathers are coming in. For optimal placement, you want the camera about one and a half to two meters from the nest, at a forty-five-degree angle. That gives you a clear view without being close enough to disturb the birds. Corn: Presumably you set this up once and don't touch it — you're not out there adjusting tripods while the pigeon gives you the side-eye. Herman: Set it up before the eggs hatch, if possible — the parents are less likely to abandon the nest early in the cycle. Once the chicks are being fed, the parental investment is high enough that they'll tolerate a lot more. But ideally, you mount the camera, run the cable through a window or under a door seal, and then leave it alone. Corn: Let's talk about the moment the chick leaves. Daniel's been waiting seven weeks, he's got the time-lapse footage, and then one morning the nest is empty. What's the protocol? Herman: This is the critical window, and it's tighter than most people realize. The chick typically fledges in the early morning — they're most active at dawn — and once it leaves, it doesn't return to the nest. The parents might hang around for a day or two, but the nesting site is effectively vacant. Daniel has twenty-four to forty-eight hours to act before a new pair moves in. Pigeons are constantly scouting for nesting sites, and a recently vacated, proven-successful nest location is prime real estate. Corn: The clock resets immediately. Herman: The sequence is: remove all nest material — wear gloves, pigeon nests can carry mites and bacteria — then clean the area with a ten percent bleach solution. That's not for disinfection, it's to remove the pheromone markers. Pigeons use scent cues to identify previous nesting sites, and if you don't break that chemical trail, the parents will be back within days. After cleaning, install the netting immediately. Don't wait. Don't think "I'll do it next weekend." The pigeons are faster than your schedule. Corn: A ten percent bleach solution to erase the pigeon's chemical signature. This sounds like a spy novel, but for balcony management. Herman: It's exactly that. You're essentially wiping the site's memory. The pigeons return, find no familiar scent markers, encounter a physical barrier, and after a few attempts, they give up and find somewhere else. They'll try — they'll probe the netting, look for gaps — but if it's properly installed and tensioned, they can't get through. Within a week or two, they stop trying entirely. Corn: The whole plan is: wait seven weeks, document everything with the Reolink, then move fast — clean, net, done. What's the failure mode here? Herman: The most common failure is incomplete netting installation. If you leave a gap at the top or the sides, pigeons will find it. They're persistent and they're good at exploiting edges. The second failure pattern is waiting too long after fledging — if you miss the forty-eight-hour window, you might find a new pair already scouting the site, and then you're back to square one, legally and biologically. The third is netting that's too loose — if a pigeon can push its head through, it'll keep trying until it gets through or gets tangled, and a tangled pigeon is both a welfare issue and a legal one. Corn: What about next season? Daniel installs the netting, the pigeons give up, everyone moves on. But pigeons live for years. Do they come back and try again? Herman: Pigeons are site-faithful, and if they successfully fledged young from that balcony, they'll remember it. They'll return the following spring, probe the netting, maybe spend a few days trying to find a way through. But if the netting is intact and properly tensioned, they'll eventually give up and find an alternative site. The key is maintenance — check the netting once a year, before breeding season, for any tears or sagging. UV-stabilized polyethylene is durable, but Jerusalem sun is intense, and over several years the material can degrade. Corn: This isn't a one-and-done. It's a one-time installation with annual inspection. Herman: And compared to the alternative — seven weeks of pigeon occupation every spring, balcony covered in droppings, the health risks that come with accumulated guano — it's a very small maintenance burden. Corn: Let's pull this into a timeline for Daniel, because I think that's what he actually needs. Week one through five: wait, observe, set up the Reolink camera with motion detection zones and time-lapse. Week six: buy the netting, buy the cleaning supplies, have everything ready. Week seven: monitor daily for fledging. Within twenty-four hours of the chick leaving, remove the nest, bleach-clean the site, install the netting. Herman: That's it. And the camera configuration during the waiting period is worth spelling out. Motion detection sensitivity at sixty to seventy on the Reolink scale. Custom detection zone drawn around the nest only. Push notifications enabled with snapshots. Email alerts with thirty-second clips if he wants them. Continuous recording to SD card or NVR for the travel period. And time-lapse at one frame every five or ten minutes for the documentary record. Corn: The time-lapse is going to be compelling. Watching a pigeon grow from egg to flight over seven weeks, compressed into a few minutes — that's the kind of thing Ezra might actually appreciate when he's older. "Here's the pigeon that lived on our balcony when you were one. Herman: There's something to be said for that. Daniel's prompt has a practical core — how do I solve this problem — but there's also an undercurrent of genuine interest. He called the pigeon "a charming sight." He's not just looking for eviction advice. He's looking for a way to coexist during the mandatory waiting period and then part ways cleanly. Corn: The ethical bottom line here is actually pretty elegant. Israeli law says you can't disturb the nest. Biology says the cycle runs seven weeks. Toddler safety says no spikes, no chemicals. Netting says you can prevent recurrence permanently without harming anyone. The Reolink camera says you can observe the whole thing remotely and come away with something valuable. Every constraint pushes toward the same solution. Herman: That solution isn't a compromise — it's the best outcome for every party involved. The pigeons get to raise their chick successfully. Daniel avoids a fine and keeps Ezra safe. The balcony is protected long-term. And there's a time-lapse at the end of it. Corn: The pigeon doesn't pay rent, but it does pay in content. Herman: I'm not sure the pigeon would appreciate that framing, but yes. Corn: One thing I want to flag — Daniel mentioned they moved recently into a high-rise. This is a new balcony, a new building. The pigeon didn't find them because they've been there for years. It found them because high-rises are pigeon magnets, and in Jerusalem, the building boom of the last decade has created a lot of new cliff-analogue real estate. This isn't going to be a one-off problem for people in Daniel's situation. Herman: As urban high-rises proliferate in Israel — and they are, especially in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv — the conflict between humans and synanthropic wildlife is going to intensify. Pigeons, swifts, house sparrows, even kestrels — these species have adapted to urban environments over centuries, and they're not going anywhere. The solutions are technical — netting, cameras, cleaning protocols — but the framework is legal and ethical. How much inconvenience are we willing to accept for coexistence? Israeli law has already answered that question in part: you can't destroy an active nest. But the law doesn't cover the follow-up. It doesn't tell you how to prevent recurrence humanely. That's where the practical knowledge comes in. Corn: The practical knowledge, in this case, is surprisingly specific. Nineteen-millimeter mesh. Sixty to seventy motion sensitivity. Ten percent bleach solution. Forty-eight-hour window. It's a checklist, not a philosophy. Herman: Which is exactly what Daniel needs. He's got a one-year-old, he's got travel plans, he's got a pigeon on his balcony. He doesn't need a meditation on urban ecology. He needs to know what to do, in what order, on what timeline. Corn: Now he does. Wait seven weeks. Document with the Reolink. The moment the chick fledges, remove the nest, bleach the site, install the netting. Check the netting annually. Herman: There's one more thing worth mentioning about the Reolink community. If Daniel runs into configuration issues — motion detection triggering too often, time-lapse settings not working as expected — the IP Cam Talk forums and the Reolink subreddit are helpful. Search "pigeon balcony Reolink" and you'll find configuration templates, camera placement diagrams, and troubleshooting threads. The Barcelona user I mentioned earlier posted their entire setup, including the custom detection zone coordinates and the time-lapse interval they used. It's a remarkably generous community for what is essentially people pointing cameras at birds. Corn: Pointing cameras at birds and sharing the results with strangers. The internet, at its best, is just people being weird about their hobbies in public. Herman: This podcast, at its best, is two brothers being weird about Daniel's prompts in public. Corn: Speaking of which. Herman: Now: Hilbert's daily fun fact. Hilbert: In the nineteen twenties, Korean linguists documented a speech level called haera-che, which was formally deferential but could express extreme rudeness depending on who used it to whom — and a Papuan trader who learned Korean in Japanese-occupied Seoul reportedly deployed it so precisely that he once insulted a local governor while using the grammatically respectful form, and everyone present understood exactly what he was doing. Corn: A Papuan trader in nineteen-twenties Seoul using honorifics as a weapon. That's a level of linguistic pettiness I can only aspire to. Herman: I have so many questions, and I'm not sure I want any of them answered. Corn: That's probably for the best. Herman: This has been My Weird Prompts. Thanks to our producer Hilbert Flumingtop. If you've got a weird prompt about technology, law, urban wildlife, or anything else that doesn't fit neatly into a category, send it to prompts at my weird prompts dot com. We read everything. Corn: If you enjoyed this episode, leave us a review wherever you listen — it helps other people find the show, and it makes Herman feel validated. Herman: I don't need validation. I have peer-reviewed studies. Corn: Sure you don't.