I have bifold doors leading to my garden. I sit in bed in my living room (yes!) working on my website looking out into my garden. I feed the squirrels. They chuck some of their squirrel feed onto the ground where pigeons feed on it. And these pigeons very rarely but also very noticeably and in an unsettling way fly into my bifold doors. As they travel about 10 yards before they hit the doors they are travelling at speed which causes them to hit the doors very hard. This could seriously harm a pigeon or perhaps even kill them.
Perhaps, too, you think I shouldn’t be bothering about the life of a pigeon because many people detest them. I don’t. I think we have to be fair to all animals. We have to treat them all equally and each animal has the same rights, in my book.
The reason why the pigeons occasionally fly into my bifold doors is because they see a reflection in the doors of the sky and the garden. They therefore think that they are flying up into the sky. The bifold doors present to them an extension or a mirror image of the garden and as they do not understand the concept of mirrors they think it’s real. How do you stop it happening? I could put their feed very close to the doors so if they took off and flew into them they would be travelling far more slowly, reducing the chance of being injured. I can’t do this because it’s impractical.
I could put netting in between the place where they feed and the bifold doors but that too is impractical in my view. Therefore, at present I will leave things as they are. No pigeons have been killed. Although I am concerned about it. The best way to deal with it would be to stop the glass reflecting the sky and the garden. I will look into that. There may be a film that you can placed over the window which is matt and dull which prevents a reflection occurring.
