An awning gives birds the one thing a flat building face does not: a sheltered horizontal space, out of the weather, a few feet above head height and rarely disturbed. Sparrows and starlings nest inside the frame and in the recess where the awning meets the wall. Pigeons sit on the top edge and on the support arms. Either way what accumulates lands on the entrance, the sidewalk and the frontage directly below.
Storefronts, restaurant frontages, hotel entrances and loading canopies all share the problem, and they share the same constraint: the awning has to keep working. It is signage as much as shelter, it may retract, and it gets looked at by everyone who walks in. That rules out anything that changes how it looks or how it operates.
Two approaches suit this. Treat the sheltered area birds are using, or close off the recess behind and above the awning so they cannot get into it.
Treating the Sheltered Area
The Flock Free O3 Invisible Netting unit is intended for covered areas and Flock Free names canopies directly among them. It is mounted above the opening and treats the sheltered space rather than the structure, so nothing is fixed to the awning itself and nothing changes about how it looks from the street.
It suits a fixed entrance canopy or a permanent awning over a doorway better than a retractable unit that spends half the year closed.
Flock Free O3 Invisible Netting – Ozone Bird Repellent
$220.00
Flock Free lists canopies, porches, hangars, sheds, barns and warehouses among the covered areas this unit is intended for. Recommended above entrances and doorways.
Netting the Recess
Where birds are nesting in the gap between the awning and the wall, or in the space behind a fixed canopy, netting closes it off and ends the problem rather than managing it. Flock Free's netting is listed for architectural bird exclusion, and black reads as shadow in a recess that is already in shade.
Net the structure, not the awning. The net is anchored to the building face and to the frame — the masonry, the fascia, the support arms — and nothing is fixed to or applied to the awning fabric itself. On a masonry or concrete frontage the Sidewinder Concrete anchors are the fixing; other frontages take a different anchor and the full hardware range is on the netting collection.
Bird Netting High Tensile Black 3/4" Mesh 50' x 50'
$755.00
3/4" mesh, high tensile, 50 ft by 50 ft. Listed by Flock Free for architectural, aqua-cultural and agricultural bird exclusion. Sized for sparrows and starlings.
Bird Netting Sidewinder Concrete Pack of 25
$95.78
Anchors rated for concrete and masonry — the fixing for a brick or concrete frontage. Pack of 25.
Where To Start
If birds are nesting in the recess or the frame, net it. That is the part of the job that does not need repeating, and on most frontages it is a small area. If the awning is retractable, or the problem is birds sheltering under a fixed entrance canopy rather than nesting in it, the O3 unit above the doorway is the approach that leaves the awning untouched.
Clear any old nesting material out before either method goes in, and do the work outside the nesting season where you can.
Prices shown as listed at the time of publication.
Related Bird Control Resources
An awning is one kind of covered area among several — see bird control for covered areas for canopies and open-sided structures generally, signs for the fascia and signage above a frontage, and gutters and railings for the edge details around it. Awnings are most often a problem with sparrows, starlings, pigeons and swallows. You can also browse the full Bird Control range.