Yelläks /ˈyæl•eks/

There are a few pigeons flying around the hostel. Usually I would not bother, but it seems, they like to take a shit just above freshly laundered clothes hanging on the balcony to dry. So by the end of the day you can do the whole batch of laundry again. What to do against these flying rats? Scaring them off by making some banging sound has a good effect for the next 10 minutes. After they return happily resuming their activities.

Finally I found a solution: I got a new friend, helping me to keep pigeons away.

Since my friend is busy hunting all day, there is no time to stay on my balcony throughout the whole time. Hence a more permanent solution was required. Another trick to keep any bird away from the balcony is putting the silhouette of a bird of prey on the balcony door. For birds it does not matter, if the outline of the bird of prey is in the sky or attached to a balcony door. They stay away from the live threatening danger. A nice source of outlines is available on the Mr. Welz’ web pages. Download the file, choose an outline and print it out. In my case, I enlarged the sparrow hawk to fit on a DIN A3 sheet, printed it and put it on my balcony door (from the outside obviously). Since then I am almost 100% pigeon free.