Why You Should Bird-proof Your TV Antenna?

This may not the best topic to talk about, but birds pooping on antennas and roofs is actually a common problem for homeowners. As their droppings are acidic, once it accumulates on roofing it can contribute to premature rust of your TV antenna and guttering.

Having a flock of birds nesting on your roof is great if you’re an avid bird watcher. It's less great if you’d rather watch TV. So you should bird-proof your antenna if you don't want the performance to be interrupted.

Reasons You Should Bird-proof Your TV Antenna

Picture Problems

Probably the surest indicator of antenna trouble caused by physical damage and wildlife disruption is if your neighbours have good TV reception while your aerial struggles. Take a good look at your TV antenna from the ground and note if any of the prongs are bent or rusted, if elements are missing and if it is facing a different direction than your neighbours’. Once you’ve completed an initial quick survey from the ground, pop out and check your aerial at different times of day (especially at dawn and dusk) to see if it’s being used as a roost or perch.

Signal Solutions

In the past, the simplest solution to a bird problem was to move your aerial to a different location, but with the enhanced positioning requirements of the digital TV signal, this is a less viable option. Disturbance to your digital signal means no TV, not just snow TV.

Bird Droppings

Birds love to roost around antennas and roofs. There is simply no way to stop them because they will always find a way to sit on your antenna, do some droppings, leaving your antenna dirty and filthy. Due to these droppings, your antenna starts to cause reception issues for you.

Sometimes these birds start to make nests on the antennas and even lay eggs! This creates a mess of hay, eggshells and other food droppings used by these birds. All this leads to extreme reception issues and terrain.

When an antenna is covered in debris or birds droppings, it fails to catch strong digital signals from a transmission tower hence making it impossible to get a clearer picture on the TV. For a good quality cable network, it is also important that your antenna is working well. That is where we need to birdproof our antennas!

Big Birds

There are 828 listed species of birds in Australia out of which many are big and heavy for an antenna. If big birds make their place on your antenna they can misplace it or can also break it. So it is important to keep such birds away in order to keep your antenna secure.

Install Bird Spikes On Your Antenna

There are many ways you can try to stop birds from landing on antennas. Unfortunately, most of them fail. Since they're not afraid of humans, they won't be afraid to perch on your ladder when you try to shoo them away from the roof.

Bird spikes, on the other hand, are made specifically for antennas. Made of UV-resistant polycarbonate, these are also very easy to fit alongside the digital aerial, don’t cause interference and come in an array of colours to blend in with your roofline. They are also completely harmless to birdlife.

Birds are smart and avoid coming anywhere near the area where these are installed.
The spikes act as a deterrent to birds alighting on your brand new shiny antenna.
Unless they are very determined, the birds just give up and find an easier perch. The result: no birds, no droppings, no signal interference and no damage to the antenna. A perfect solution!

Why using bird spikes, you may ask?

• They can be fixed to any antenna as there is a huge variety of antennas that come in different sizes.
• They last long. SO LONG. Some birds’ spikes give you protection for even 20 years.
• If you want to change your antenna, these spikes can easily be fixed into the new one.