Do you want to keep doves away from your bird feeding station this year?
While it is not only possible to keep birds away from your feeder, but it is possible to do so by moving your feeder to a different location on your property.
The key is to establish a different vantage point for your feeder.
Since your feeder is positioned on a platform, it will be easy for doves to fly up or over it.
How to Keep Doves Off Bird Feeder
Contents
If you wish to keep mourning doves away permanently, you have to start feeding them by hand.
You can provide them with this food until they get used to it. Once they get used to eating seeds, you can simply restrict their access to the bird feeder.
Weeds are unsightly and may spread to the flowers you are trying to grow.
Additionally, the weeds may fill up the cracks of the soil and leave the soil lumpy, which can cause holes in the ground and expose your plants to the elements. Weeds can also cause erosion and create muddy areas during rain.
Mourning doves, on the other hand, prefer to feed on a variety of seeds found in trees and plants.
These birds usually eat the flowers, leaves, and parts of plants that they find amusing and nutritious. Additionally, mourning doves will eat from bird feeders, suet cages, and seed-sprinkled birdbaths.
If you keep your yard clear of weeds, you will not have to worry about the mourning doves eating your beautiful flowers.
Avoid opening to all dishes.
Because doves are predominantly seed-eaters, it is a wise move to avoid using other types of bird food.
To deter doves from stealing food from feeders, it is best to use closed feeding tubes.
A dove may be fed in a variety of different ways, including in a shallow dish, a hand-held bird feeder, or attached to a hanging feeder. Feeding doves from hanging feeders may be too challenging for some.
Anyone who eats from an unguarded feeder is likely to attract pigeons or doves that can use it to steal the seed.
One of the biggest reasons to keep doves away from open-top platform feeders is to prevent sparrows from eating your bird food.
Know the Impacts
Although the main purpose is to keep mourning doves away, these approaches may also scare other birds.
Conduct a study before employing any of these strategies to keep mourning doves away from your bird feeders.
After all, the purpose of a bird feeder is to attract birds, not keep doves away.
If you can’t get rid of the mourning doves on your own, consider hiring a pest control service that can get rid of doves once and for all.
Distract Doves on ground
Distracting doves away from a bird feeder by scattering wild bird seeds on the ground is one approach to keep them away from a bird feeder.
Even if you have a bird feeder with food in it, doves won’t be drawn to it if it’s placed in an area of the yard where they normally browse.
If you want to feed tiny birds instead of doves, you may do so by leaving the bird feeders intact while you feed the doves on the ground.
In the same way that you would feed a pigeon to a crow on the ground, you should feed mourning doves to common ground doves.
Even if you have a food-filled bird feeder, if all the other birds in the area are eating from it, the doves might ignore it.
You may feed little birds instead of doves by placing seedless grapes or raisins on the trays and letting them free-feed.
You should feed mourning doves to ordinary ground doves in stable locations since doves may be too shy to fly into feeders.
Doves like to be fed directly from the ground, so a piece of grass or soil may be an ideal location provided the bird food is easily available.
Change up the Habitat
Try transferring mourning doves to another location.
To keep doves away from your bird feeders, make sure that the feeders are put up atop platforms, trees, or shrubs on top of high perches, so the birds have to climb to reach them and fall from them.
When you’re using a platform, make sure that it does not get knocked over by the wind.
If you prefer hanging the feeders, secure them with ropes or cables so that they cannot become detached from the tree.
Keep the distance to the bird feeders as short and level as possible so that it would take the doves longer to get to them and allow you to pick them off easier.
If no perching space is available, it may help to use moving scare tactics to keep them off the site. This can consist of hanging noisemakers near the doves’ preferred nesting areas.
Stop Attracting Them
Remove the object that first attracted them to your yard in the first place.
The most likely functions of these birds are: They’ll help control the populations of other pest birds. They’ll help control the populations of other pest birds.
The mourning dove has a wingspan of 18 to 24 inches, making it a threat to other birds such as sparrows and pigeons. Mourning doves are dark gray-brown with pointed wings and dark gray underbellies.
Their preferred meals are cracked corn, sunflowers, and millet.
Mourning doves prefer to nest on the ground, but they have been known to nest in trees. They build their nests of large twigs and branches, but they have been known to use a box that may or may not hold twigs.
If you have bird feeders, they should also have perches for them to rest in place.
A perch shaped like a tree trunk or a stump, or some piece of timber, will suffice. Sometimes, a mourning dove will land on the ground, particularly if there are active nestlings in the area.
If you don’t want this to happen, you can leave the perch conspicuously on your garden.
Even if they are unable to enter, the tree they landed on will be enough.
Also Read: Why So Many Crows All of a Sudden?
Conclusion
Doves should not be fed in your backyard, either.
If you feed them, you’ll only be inviting yourself in for trouble: not only will the doves keep coming back, but your bird feeder will become a prime target for predatory birds like sparrows, crows, and hawks.
Any open-top platform bird feeders should be kept in areas far from where you place your bird feeder.
Lastly, use a high-quality, squirrel-resistant bird feeder to provide habitat for a large number of different birds.
